A Study of English Language Education within Liberal Arts Context at The Japanese Universities in the 21^<st> Century

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The following four main topics compose the overall achievement of this research project :(1)Basic surveys : we measured by TOEIC the English competence of freshmen at the University of Tokyo and accumulated data for three years. In addition, we compared the contents of English textbooks for high school students from the point of view of their differences between those of the new curriculum and the old one, and systematically sorted out the results. (2)Faculty development : we made a database containing not only of the texts used in the last four years in the English language classes in the Department of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo, but also of their contents and generic tendencies. This work has been put in practical use in the curriculum reforms by our English Language Section in 2006. (3)Prospects of writing education : the most important consequence of this research project is that we discovered the potential of "writing" for English language teaching in the liberal arts educational curriculum. Based on this recognition, the English Language Section of the University of Tokyo published a textbook for academic writing, First Moves, in 2005. Moreover, the knowledge brought about by this research was effectively applied to the Critical Writing Program (CWP), established in the same year in the Department of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo. (4)Cooperation with other related research projects : some of the members of this research took part in a research commissioned by MEXT in 2002 and 2003 and made investigations on the actual conditions of English language education at the university level in Japan and a survey of the attitude of English language teachers. Each of these four points corresponds to the chapter of the final report.