Good writing in Japanese: Comparison between L2 Japanese and L1Japanese

本研究的目的是通过对一语和二语日语作文的考察，从更广泛的角度来阐明日语作文中好的写作要素，以期对日语写作教育有所帮助。收集的数据包括两种类型的文章(一篇说明文和一篇议论文)，由日语母语者和二语学习者(英语母语者和汉语母语者)所写。分析这些文章的重点是“组织”和“读者意识”。结果表明，尽管不同群体之间存在微小的差异，但总的来说，所有群体的作者都没有完全理解一篇文章的宏观结构，也没有充分理解元语言话语标记语的有效使用。此外，与英文组的作家相比，中文组和日本组的作家似乎都没有表现出对读者的意识。从这项研究中可以清楚地看出，第二语言和第一语言的日语写作教育都需要发展改进的方法来教授文章的组织和读者意识。

The purpose of this research is to clarify elements of good writing in Japanese essays in broader perspective by examining both L1 and L2 Japanese essays in order to contribute to the Japanese writing education. The data collected consists of two kinds of essays (an expository essay and an argumentative essay) written by native speaker of Japanese as well as L2 learners of Japanese (native speakers of English and that of Chinese). These essays were analyzed focusing on “organization” and ‘reader awareness.” The results indicate that although small differences were observed among groups, overall, writers from all groups did not fully understand the macro organization of an essay, nor the effective use of meta linguistic discourse markers. Also, compared to writers in the English group, writers in both the Chinese group and the Japanese group seemed to show less awareness of their readers. It is clear from this study, L2 as well as L1 Japanese writing education needs to develop improved ways to teach organization of an essay and reader awareness.