Alexander Bain and Paragraph-Writing Education in Japanese Universities

概要

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The main purpose of this paper is to criticize, for the following three reasons, a recent trend in Japanese universities where the paragraph theory is taught as if it were the sole universal way of writing, whether in English or Japanese. First, the paragraph theory was primarily established by Alexander Bain (1818-1903) and it has survived and dominated American education for only a century and a half. Second, according to some previous studies, eminent writers do not necessarily follow paragraph-writing rules when writing in English. Third, as some surveys on contrastive rhetoric suggest, each culture has its own organizational or structural pattern of writing documents. The paragraph-writing method should not be applied directly to education in writing Japanese or be imposed on Japanese students writing Japanese. When we teach English or Japanese writing in Japanese universities, the teachers should explain these situations. Explaining only prescriptive rules that are mentioned in English composition textbooks is confusing to many Japanese students.
2011-07-30