Paper short abstract:

This action research examined teaching writing of resume in a business Japanese course for third-year undergraduate students in Italy. This aimed at enhancing students' employability through the process of interacting with their own thoughts and writing in their own Japanese.

Paper long abstract:

This action research examined teaching writing of resume in a business Japanese course for third-year undergraduate students of the department of Asia and North Africa Studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in Italy. This aimed at enhancing students' employability while encouraging them to interact with their own thoughts and write in their own Japanese. Employability refers to the potential to discover a job that fits themselves as well as meeting the social needs and expectations throughout a lifetime, and employability is situated as an essential attitude for university students to increase the quality of life after graduation (the European Higher Education Area, 2006). Previous research pointed out, however, that European universities failed to offer the curriculums that improve the employability of Japanese majoring students (Conrad 2019). In light of this, I planned the resume activity as a mother tongue teacher specialist in the course. I instructed strategies to write an appealing resume for companies using a Japanese resume format (e.g., how to write personal information, educational background and work experiences); however, more emphasis was put on writing activities of motivation for applying and self-promotion in the resume. The students were required to write and revise their drafts repeatedly by incorporating the feedback on the drafts from the teacher and their classmates. This research examined how the students developed their writing through this revising process. The developments of the contents indicated that the students gradually gained insights both into themselves and into the business world. Individual interviews, which were conducted after the end of the course, showed that they gained self-confidence toward job hunting, and consequently they became more proactive in opportunities for employment (application for internships, events for job hunting on campus). Overall, this research attempted to suggest how a Japanese language course in university can contribute to enhancing the employability of students through writing activities; the effort to write in Japanese may help the students carefully reflect on their past experience and gain self-awareness for how they want to relate themselves and their study of Japanese to society.