This paper provides an overview of the curriculum revision of "Inquiry Seminar I," "Inquiry Seminar II," and "Inquiry Seminar III" in the Department of Secondary Education, Faculty of Education, Okayama University of Science, and the accompanying changes in syllabus content. In the revised curriculum, these courses are focused on the acquisition of academic writing and oral presentation skills in an academic setting, and thus "Inquiry Seminar I" is now the first course in the four-year course of study related to research activities aimed at graduation research and thesis writing. We then outlined that in the revised curriculum, the issues that the Department of Secondary Education had before the revision regarding the development of academic writing knowledge and skills have been improved.
Furthermore, we reported on the practice in the report writing exercise in the "Seminar of Inquiry I" in 2023, and discussed the effectiveness of this practice based on the results of the questionnaire survey. This practice focused on five key points regarding the very basic knowledge and skills of academic writing, and aimed to make students aware of the need to continue practicing these skills even after the completion of this exercise. The results of the survey indicated that this practice was effective in terms of raising awareness. In addition, the final assignment for the spring semester required students to argue from a different viewpoint than their own, and this functioned effectively not only as a review of the report writing exercise, but also as preparation for a debate in which they would argue their own ideas in isolation.
In addition, we also discussed the fact that, among the main points of this report writing exercise, points (1) to (4) are the teaching points of the Japanese expression course in the Japanese language department of upper secondary schools, and that this report writing exercise could function as a complement to the teaching points in upper secondary schools.
