Japanese: Academic Writing and Research Methodology

Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• formulate a clear project description, with a relevant theoretical approach and discussion of methodology, for a viable research project related to Japanese language or literature
• collect and critically examine material relevant to the project
• write different types of academic text, such as an abstract, a review, a popular science summary, or a scientific article
• account for basic research methods in linguistics, translation studies and literature, in a Japanese context
• analyze the arguments used in academic texts in Japanese in detail and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these arguments
• discuss and explain the concepts of academic plagiarism and integrity
• give constructive criticism of the work of another and respond to the criticism of theirs in an objective way.

In the course, we study various examples of basic research methods that are commonly used in research about Japanese language and literature. Based on these examples, students formulate a number of ideas for research projects. They then choose one of these, for which they write a detailed project description, an abstract and a popular science summary. Furthermore, they write reviews of a number of scientific articles and thereby they practice their ability to discuss the contents of scientific texts.

Assessment is based on the writing of a project description and a number of written assignments, and on the constructive participation in tutorials and seminars. The project description will be defended at a seminar where it will be examined by the fellow students. It should be written in English and should have a length of about 2000-3000 words.

English and, where appropriate, Swedish are used as the language of tuition. Teaching is done in the form of tutorials and class discussions.

The Swedish grades A–F.

Reporting of grades:

• Module 1: Reviews (9 cr)
• Module 2: Project description (6 cr)