Foreword

To Students and Teachers

Essay-Writing Foundations

This book is designed to guide novice writers of English from basic paragraph composition to short essays. The approach taken is structural, with each chapter emphasizing particular components of English academic style. Since the audience for this book is first-year university students in all departments, the content focus is English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP). Teachers and students should take this into account as they complete the exercises in the book.

Students coming to this course directly out of Japanese high school should picture EGAP essay writing as situated between the kansobun (a common writing assignment in Japanese Junior and Senior High Schools) and the sotsugyoronbun (the research paper required in Japan by most departments for graduation from university). Academic writing needs to explain ideas clearly, in a logical order so that it is understandable to a large number of readers. The aim of this course is to help students acquire English writing skills that enable them to write clear and concise essays.

While academic writing may be defined differently depending on who you ask, academic essays generally have the following features:

• a specific topic focus,
• unified and coherent paragraphs,
• a generic Introduction-Body-Conclusion structure,
• references to external sources of information.

Learning how to write academic essays is important and relevant for university students because academic essays:

• create a bridge to research papers,
• help students organize ideas logically,
• are required by many academic tests and university courses,
• introduce students to proper citation to avoid plagiarism.

This textbook takes a structural approach to learning how to write an EGAP academic essay. There are two main components comprising this approach. First, the book aims to serve as a practical, accessible reference guide for students wishing to review the main parts of academic essays. The book’s focus on structural components showcases the parts of an essay by referring to the following:

Location: Where is the part?
Functions: What is the purpose of that part?
Features: What are the elements found in that part?

This approach helps students to identify, describe, and explain the parts and then apply them in their academic writing.

Second, the book introduces novice writers to a process approach for academic writing. While there is more than one way to organize academic writing, being aware of the writing process can help students approach their writing assignments strategically in a systematic way. The writing process is a sequence of steps writers can follow when writing essays. This book outlines six steps for producing academic essays.

EGAP Writing 1: Academic Essays has 14 chapters. Each chapter opens with a list of objectives, and the components of essay writing are introduced through the following sequenced sections:

• Learn It! Introduces key information about the parts of the essay and writing process
• Practice It! Offers exercises to practice newly acquired knowledge
• Write It! Presents students with academic writing tasks

Some chapters include Preview It! and Review It! exercises as well. In boxes titled FYI (For Your Information), teachers and students will find additional information to raise students’ awareness about certain issues in academic writing and give tips for better writing. The glossary at the end of the book presents the chapters’ key terminology as a quick reference for both students and teachers.

Exercises in this book form the foundation students will need for completing the more advanced writing exercises in the volume: EGAP Writing 2: Research Writing. A teacher guide is available for both books.

To learn how to navigate the pdf of this textbook, see the EGAP Writing navigation guide. Refer to the back page to learn more about the creators of this material.

English Writing-Listening Instructors
Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, i-ARRC
Kyoto University
January 2026