高校教科書と大学教材内のパラグラフ・ライティングタスクの分析

Despite high school students receiving basic English instruction regarding the four key skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing, a large number of Japanese college students learning English as a foreign language continue to have difficulty in writing English paragraphs or essays. With this background, the purpose of this study is to analyze the features of paragraph writing tasks in six Japanese senior high school English textbooks and six English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) college textbooks to clarify the differences between them. The textbooks were initially examined to see whether paragraph writing tasks were included. In addition, the tasks were analyzed with respect to the type of process writing skills, connectors, their cooperative aspects, and features such as topics and discourse patterns. The result demonstrated that both sets of textbooks included paragraph writing tasks. However, while tasks in Japanese senior high school textbooks focused on grammar-oriented activities, those in college writing textbooks varied from English composition at the sentence level to writing multiple paragraphs and academic essays. Therefore, the study suggests that it is crucial for Japanese college teachers to develop supplementary materials for underprepared students in writing programs to bridge the gap between high school and college English writing classes.