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NU Ideas Volume 2, Number 2

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Nagoya University Multidisciplinary Journal

Proceedings of the Symposium on
Academic Writing and Critical Thinking

Introducing a Logical Thinking Approach to Teaching Academic Writing:
Why is Logical Thinking Education Needed in Academic Writing

Wai Ling Lai
Nagoya University

Since its establishment, academic writing education has been implemented basically as a language education program. Although the limited scope of academic writing education is helpful for those who write academic papers in their second or third language, it is not very popular for the majority of academic writers. This paper aims to explain why this is the case, and how academic writing education can become more attractive. Accordingly, the paper will be divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the problem. I shall explain that the limited scope of academic writing education is not popular because it cannot help the majority of academic writers to deal with the most serious problems in academic writing; namely how to make their thoughts in the writing clear and convincing. The second part suggests how the problem should be solved. I shall argue that in order to help the writers make their thoughts clear and convincing, an appropriate education in logical thinking should be incorporated into academic writing. But as we shall see, the logic education proposed here differs radically from the conventional approaches.

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