Academic Writing Contest 2021　審査結果

Every year during the annual Academic Writing Contest we are sent a number of fascinating papers on diverse themes, and this year was no exception. It is inspiring to see that the authors of these papers have delved deeply into an academic area of their choice, and that in itself certainly constitutes an intellectual endeavor worthy of praise. In addition to that, the fact that they have attempted to express their ideas in written form in a foreign language ― in English ― is both ambitious and impressive.

Nevertheless, producing a properly written and documented academic paper in any language is a challenging task, and this year few prizes were awarded, not because the papers were uninteresting or poorly researched ― several of the papers were exceptionally well researched ― but rather because problems were observed among the judges that were related either to problems with how the papers were written or how they were documented. In closing, at the risk of ending on a rather negative note, I will touch on a few of the problems that we observed in the hope that by mentioning them, those who participate in the contest in the future might be able to avoid some of these mistakes.

I am always surprised, both in my own classes as well as in my position as judge in this contest, to discover that so many students have difficulty with the rules of documentation. I find this surprising because, while I understand that it might be annoying to have to learn these rules, I don't find them to be especially difficult. Therefore, my guess is that a number of students don't learn the rules properly not because of the level of difficulty ― which, again, I believe is not very high, especially for a student at Keio ― but rather because students do not understand the importance of these rules. The rules of sports might provide a useful, though imperfect, analogy here. Imagine a young athlete who has practiced dribbling and shooting a basketball for many hours and has become very good at it. But then imagine that that same young athlete has been put into a basketball game, but that person has never learned the very important rule that a player must not walk or run with the ball when not dribbling. It would be an odd sight. Or imagine a young soccer player who decides to trap a ball with his or her hands. Of course, it is hard to imagine such a thing, because young athletes all understand the importance of learning the rules of their sport so they can play the game properly. By contrast, quite a few students fail to understand the importance of learning the rules of documentation when engaging in academic writing. To give just one example, the judges of this year's contest came across one paper which was well written and well researched, but in this paper the list of references had been made without any attention paid to the basic rules of documentation: the entries were not in alphabetical order; there was inappropriate space between the entries; the entries were not indented properly, and so on. Needless to say, this paper did not receive any kind of prize.

As for problems related to the way the papers were written, I will mention just three in closing: the lack of a clear argument in many of the papers; an excessively 'journalistic' feel to many of the papers; and finally, some of the papers were lacking in unity. A paper that lacks a clear argument is nothing more than a collection of facts related to a specific topic. This, in our view, does not constitute a proper research paper. Rather, we are hoping that the author of the paper will express a clear point of view on the topic, and construct a clear argument by providing information and expert opinion and so on which clearly function to provide support for his or her point of view. In many of the papers we saw, this kind of approach was lacking. In addition, many of the papers were not sufficiently 'academic'. When one writes an academic paper one is, in a sense, participating in a discussion that is taking place, or has taken place, on an 'academic' theme among scholars in an academic field. By contrast, a paper with a 'journalistic' feel would be one that concerns a topic which has recently been the focus of attention in the mainstream media. My sense is that 'journalistic' papers on the part students have increased in recent years, and my guess about why that might be the case is because students nowadays have easy access to information over the internet, and much of the information that is easily accessed tends to be journalistic in nature. The thing that students need to learn in relation to this phenomenon is that initial internet searches for information, while not wrong in and of themselves, need to be supplemented by trips to the library where students can access academic books and articles. Finally, the last common problem that the judges observed that I will mention here is the problem of unity. It is common for students to write about two different themes in the same paper. That constitutes a problem with 'unity'. If students can avoid the problems I have mentioned here ― the problem of 'unity', the problem of writing in an overly 'journalistic' style, and the problem of simply listing a bunch of facts without making a clear argument ― then they will have a much better chance of creating an academic paper worthy of the name.