名古屋高等教育研究 第 19 号 （2019）

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for
Education in Research Writing and Presentation
Wai Ling LAI*
Chad NILEP**
Mark WEEKS***
Nicolas BAUMERT****
Kazuhisa TODAYAMA*****＜Abstract＞
Writing effectively for the purpose of publications at aninternational level requires the use of appropriate and expectedlanguage, balanced appeals, and convincing logical argument. While
many forms of writing instruction discuss the connection to rhetoric,
and instruction for second-language writers often highlights theimportance of grammar, the role of logic in research writing may not
be sufficiently stressed. As a result, many graduate students andyoung researchers do not understand how to make their research
clear and convincing. A logical thinking approach, in which a clear
thesis statement is produced early and then developed into a logicallyconvincing argument through the research process, can help suchresearchers. This paper explains how a logical thinking approach is
implemented across courses on academic communication skills. It
presents classroom activities designed to help graduate students
acquire the skills of logical writing. In addition to research papers,
attention to argumentation and reasoning is helpful in preparing
preliminary abstracts and oral presentations, and this is shown to be
no less important when communicating across cultures anddisciplines.

*Associate Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University**Associate Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University***Associate Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University****Associate Professor, Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University*****Professor, Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University267

1．Introduction
At Nagoya University Writing Center, we advocate a logical thinking
approach (LTA) to writing a research paper and preparing a conference
presentation. Briefly put, LTA focuses on the development of a thesis
statement or central idea in research. Such an idea is usually an
unconfirmed hypothesis in the early stage of research, to be turned into a
confirmed conclusion equipped with logically convincing premises in the
final stage. Accordingly, LTA is a process of developing a hypotheticalthesis statement into a logically convincing argument. Following LTA,
students are taught to prepare a research paper by first formulating apreliminary thesis statement, and then proceed to confirm the statementby constructing logically convincing premises based on the statement. The
word “logical” in LTA is used in a narrow sense: The premises are
logically convincing if the contents of the premises are inferentiallyrelevant to the content of the thesis statement.
While we briefly outline how logically convincing premises can beconstructed, the primary focus of this paper lies in a general
understanding of how the development of a thesis statement can be widely
applicable and implementable in academic writing and presentation
courses. For this purpose, we will first show the justification for LTA inthe current Japanese system of higher education, and then show how LTA
can be widely applied and implemented.
The justification for LTA will be shown in section 2, through reference
to two major programs created by Japan’s Ministry of Education (MEXT).
One program helps graduate students develop transferrable or generalskills, and another encourages selected universities to compete for top
rankings in global research. Section 3 explains why it is important to start
writing a research paper with a reasonably clear thesis statement, as anorganizing device to help researchers determine the research direction(Moore and Cassel 2011), to avoid a purely data-driven article without alogical conclusion (Belcher 2009), and to help them collect research data
more effectively. In section 4 the paper illustrates how the recipes andtemplates provided as part of the logical thinking approach are used in268

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

graduate-level

educationatNagoyaUniversity.

Creating

andcommunicating a concise point−a thesis statement or controlling idea−isinvaluable for coursework in research writing, as well as seminars
dedicated to preparing and delivering presentations (section 5). The logicalthinking approach is implemented in multiple languages, and for scholars
from different disciplinary as well as cultural backgrounds. As discussed
in section 6, the approach described here helps researchers tocommunicate across all of these boundaries.

2．Why is the Logical Thinking Approach Needed?
We can begin to see the need for the logical thinking approach throughtwo major programs created by MEXT (Japan’s Ministry of Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology).
The first program is called the Program for Leading Graduate Schools.
It was created to solve what is commonly known as “the post-doc problem.”
Briefly, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, nine selected universities
reformed their education systems following MEXT’s suggestion toprioritize graduate programs over undergraduate programs. Almost all
the top universities extended their PhD program enrollment limits, one
result of which was to invite an awkward situation in which they produce
more graduates than the universities and research institutes in Japan
could ever accommodate.
To solve the problem, the program requires the universities to help
graduate students broaden their career paths, so that they do not have tolimit their career options to one or two academic fields. According to thewebsite of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the programaims tofoster excellent students who are both highly creative andinternationally attuned and who will play leading roles in the academic,
industrial and governmental sectors across the globe” (JSPS 2010). Clearly,
one of the purposes of the program is to diversify career paths forpost-docs.
However, in order to expand the career goals of graduate students, it ishighly desirable to implement curricula that can give them transferrable269

or general skills applicable to non-academic fields. Even if they become
specialists in their own specific fields, it does not mean that they arecapable of communicating their research to people in other academic fields
or people outside of an academic environment. To help these students copewith the changes, many “leading” graduate schools in Japan have launchedcourses for leadership training, career education or liberal arts education
for postgraduates.
In our view, logical thinking education resides at the core of liberal arts
education for graduate students simply because such thinking skills may
be transferable across different academic fields and beyond.
Another program launched by MEXT, the Top Global University

Project, encourages some top universities in Japan to move toward aleading position in global research. In order to become global leaders,
universities in Japan should improve their educational policies toincorporate the logical thinking approach into their writing andpresentation education. An effective way to the top is to raise theuniversity’s contribution to the international academic community. For
this purpose, more and more researchers and even students in Japan areencouraged to write papers in foreign languages, papers that are suitablefor publication in top international journals. In order to meet this challenge,
the content of such papers must be highly innovative, clear, and logicallyconvincing.
Unfortunately, many graduate students at Japanese universities havedifficulty producing papers that meet the challenge, at least in part
because of a lack of systematic training in logical thinking and academic
communication. In Japan, there is no substantive logical thinking/writing/speaking curriculum in elementary and middle school education. Students
have to learn how to think logically and express their thoughts
convincingly from scratch after they enter universities. The same applies
to students from outside Japan, many of whom complain that they havegreat difficulty in constructing logically convincing arguments in writing apaper in spite of their high research and linguistic competency. The usual
reason they give is, “I never learned such skills in my school days.” So, if
universities aim to “increase the ratio of international students” by270

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

rendering their educational programs more attractive in the eyes ofstudents from overseas, they need to include courses for writing lessons
combining logical thinking education.
Indeed, proper education in logical thinking skills is important forlearning how to write a publishable research paper. Although there aremany textbooks and online materials that provide guides on how to
improve academic writing in English, there is a tendency to focus on how
to improve the language skills in the writing (Lai 2013). While mastery of
the proper use of grammar, punctuation, and academic phraseology issurely important for making a research paper intelligible, more is required
to make it publishable. For example, the criteria for scientific papers to be
accepted for publication in Nature are that they (i) “report original
scientific research,” (ii) “are of outstanding scientific importance,” and (iii)“reach a conclusion of interest to an interdisciplinary readership.”1)
Authors are encouraged to explain, in a cover letter to the journal editors,
why the submitted paper should be considered for publication. Suchpapers should be not only clear but also convincing. Obviously, merely
producing a paper that is free of language problems is not sufficient formeeting the publication criteria.
In order to meet such publication criteria, a research paper author must,
above all, have a clear idea about the originality and significance of his or
her research. And he or she must have a logical argument to convince awide range of readers how the idea was established and why it should be
accepted. To help our students fulfill these extra-linguistic requirements,
we have adopted a specific logical thinking approach that focuses on thedevelopment of a thesis statement in research writing and presentation.

3．The Importance of a Thesis Statement in Research Writing
To begin with, let us clarify what “research writing” and “thesis
statement” mean here. When teaching postgraduates, most of our courses
and tutorials focus on a particular range of research writing. Thesematerials mainly cover journal papers, master’s as well as doctoral
dissertations, book reviews, grant proposals, conference proceedings and271

abstracts. A thesis statement represents the central idea or main claim ofa research paper. The idea is expressed in the form of a statement, which
is normally presented in one simple sentence. Since a thesis statement isessentially an idea, it is changeable throughout the process of writing a
research paper. In the beginning of the process, a thesis statement is ahypothesis or unconfirmed conclusion. Once the requisite support for the
hypothesis is properly established, then the thesis statement becomes aconfirmed conclusion.
There is a general acknowledgement among writing centers that athesis statement is an essential element of argumentative writing. For
example, the Purdue Online Writing Lab advises that an argumentativepiece of writing must begin with a thesis (Weida and Stolley 2017).
Philosophers who link logic studies to academic writing also agree thathaving a clear thesis statement is essential for the writing process. For
example, Howard Kahane and Nancy Cavender suggested that the firsttask in writing an argumentative essay is to determine a precise thesis forthe essay (Kahane and Cavender 2006: 204). The narrow range of research
writing specified above clearly falls into the genre of argumentative
writing, and thus it is essential for such writing to have a thesis statement.
We would argue further that it is important to begin the research writing
process with a thesis statement.
3.1

Starting with a Thesis Statement

In their book about the important role that the thesis statement plays incollege writing, Kathleen Moore and Susie Cassel treat thesis statements
as the basis of writing as well as reading an academic essay. For thereader, the thesis statement functions as “an anchor” that helps him/her
understand the points made in the essay. For the writer, it functions as “anorganizing device” that helps him/her think through the issues to becovered, and decide which points are most relevant to the main claim(Moore and Cassel 2011: 8).
Looking at research writing in particular, Moore and Cassel’s point
about thesis statements can be appreciated even more. Most of the writing
we work with is based on research carried out for the purpose of solving

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Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentationa problem or answering a question (see also Booth et al. 2008: 10). As longas research is directed toward solving a problem or answering a question,
it cannot be properly carried out without having a reasonably clear
hypothesis. The hypothesis functions as “an organizing device” that helps
the researcher(s) determine the research direction, and identify theevidence that is needed to support the hypothesis. Research in this sense isa process of collecting the data and establishing the support for ahypothesis. And research writing is a process of presenting the data andsupport that turned a hypothesis or thesis statement into a confirmed
conclusion. In both cases, a hypothesis is the basis.
It might be pointed out that certain researches are exploratory bynature, and thus do not require a hypothesis before the investigations arecarried out. However, even a researcher with no explicit hypothesis to test
implicitly has some aim and expected end in mind. Note that therequirement for having a hypothesis at an early stage of research does notmean that the hypothesis must be fixed at that time. Quite the contrary, ahypothesis should be changeable throughout the research process. If ahypothesis cannot be supported, then it will need to be modified or evenabandoned. It would be quite unrealistic to have no idea or purpose at all
during an investigation. It would be like sailing into the open sea without
having any idea where to go. One would not even know where to begin.
But worst of all, if the process of writing a research paper is not directedby a reasonably clear thesis statement, then it might be at risk of
becoming what Wendy Belcher calls a “data-driven article” (Belcher 2009:86-9). As the name suggests, the author of a data-driven paper tends tofocus more on presenting the data that he or she has spent a great deal oftime and effort to collect, rather than caring about whether the data canactually support the conclusion of the paper. As a result, readers of thearticle may be left puzzled by the connection between the data andconclusions.
In order to avoid data-driven articles, therefore, one should pay more
attention to the paper’s thesis statement and its connection to the
supporting data. Paying attention to this connection means that one needs
to be careful in judging if the premises really provide convincing support273

for the thesis statement. It would be difficult to make such a judgement
without the guidance of a clear thesis statement.
3.2

Thesis Statement and Convincing Support

The term convincing means “capable of causing someone to believe thatsomething is true or real” (Stevenson 2018). Based on that definition, inorder for certain premises to be counted as convincing support for aparticular thesis statement, the premises must be capable of causing
someone, anyone with a third-party point of view, to believe that the thesis
statement is true. In other words, it is by virtue of the premises that one
can come to believe that the thesis statement is true. If we explore further
based on this definition, we can see that in order for the premises to becapable of causing a third party to believe that the thesis statement is true,
they must at least satisfy the following two conditions.
First of all, the contents of the premises must be objectively verifiable.
The reason behind this condition is quite straightforward: In order for thepremises to cause a third party to believe that a thesis statement is true,
then the contents of the premises must be verifiable from the third-party
point of view. For example, suppose that the thesis statement to besupported is: “there is a black pig on the farm”,2) then the ideal premisethat can deliver the convincing support would be the fact that there isindeed a black pig on the farm. Facts are objectively verifiable. If it is truly
the case that there is a black pig on the farm, then it is objectively
verifiable by anyone, and ipso facto, one can come to believe that the thesis
statement that “there is a black pig on the farm” is true. Note that thecontents of the premises are not limited to facts. As long as they areobjectively verifiable, the contents could cover things that are not directly
observable such as mathematical truths, universal laws, and other forms ofknowledge that are commonly held.
Second, the contents of the premises must be inferentially relevant to
the thesis statement being supported. The inferential relevance here
describes an unconventional inferential relationship that links the truth ofa thesis statement to the truth of the supporting premises by matching thecontent of the statement with the content of the premises. The simple

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Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

example given above shows an ideal match between the premises andthesis statement: the fact that there is a black pig in the farm perfectly
matches with the content of the thesis statement. In other words, thehypothesis is perfectly realized or instantiated in the real world. In such an
ideal case, the premises confirm the thesis statement with 100% certainty.
But frankly speaking, the example oversimplifies how the fact was
obtained. In reality, it is almost impossible for any non-trivial hypothesis tobe perfectly realized or instantiated in the real world. That is, if the
hypothesis is non-trivial, then instead of finding the black pig as such, it isoften the case that we can at best find footprints that resemble a pig’s,
black hair that resembles a pig’s, etc. The findings are not conclusive
enough to be the confirmation of the black pig, but they serve as reliableindicators of the pig, through which a third party can reasonably infer thepresence of a black pig. A reliable indicator of a pig is inferentially relevantto the hypothesis about a pig. As long as the footprints and hair reliably
indicate the presence of a pig, and if it turns out that the footprints andhair found indeed came from a black pig, then one can come to believe that
there is a black pig on the farm. Note that linking premise and conclusion
by inference is a hallmark of every legitimate argument, regardless ofwhether the premises make the conclusion necessary (i.e. deductive) or
probable (i.e. inductive, and or abductive). The inferential relevance
relationship here further enables a principled distinction to be drawn
between data that constitute convincing support and data that do not.
Whether the premises confirm or infer a thesis statement, in order forthe premises to be convincing support, their content must be relevant tothe content of the thesis statement. And in order to judge if the content of
the premises is relevant to the content of the thesis statement or not, there
must be a thesis statement beforehand. This is another reason why it isimportant to have a clear thesis statement before building the support.
3.3

Arguments for Subjective Claims

As was stated above, the premises used for convincing support inresearch writing should be objectively verifiable. Nevertheless, the criteria
for convincingness described in LTA are also useful for research writing275

that makes subjective claims. By “subjective claims” we mean claims
related to values, norms, preferences, etc. Specifically, the support for suchclaims should be inferentially related to the conclusion, and the data must
be relevant to the claim.
Since claims of this sort do not have an external truth value, they cannot
be verified in the same way we may seek to verify natural phenomena.
However, much writing seeks not to prove the truth of its conclusion but
to establish probability and superiority over other potential arguments(Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz 2004). Techniques similar to those used tosupport the probability of claims about objective phenomena can be used
to make subjective claims more effective and persuasive.
As an example of such a subjective claim, consider scholar VicenteDiaz’s (2016) critique of the marketing of the Disney film, Moana. Diazclaims that the marketing featured “distasteful representation, cultural
appropriation, and crass commercialization of Islander culture andtradition.” Claims about distastefulness and crassness are subjective in thesense that they relate to individual or social preferences. Yet Diaz uses
techniques of inductive reasoning to support his point of view. He begins
by pointing to depictions in past Disney films that have been criticized as
racist or sexist. Next, he points to critical scholarship that suggests theDisney corporation has responded to past criticism in ways similar to their
responses to criticism of Moana. In both of these arguments the evidence
is subjective − critics’ beliefs about past events. But Diaz’s use ofgeneralization from past observations to support a conclusion about a newcase makes use of logical inference and relevance in ways like thosedescribed above.
In short, the insights of LTA are applicable to research writing that
relates to norms and values as well as natural or social phenomena. A clear
thesis statement and effective argumentation can help make subjective as
well as objective academic writing convincing.

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3.4

A Recipe Approach to Developing a Thesis Statement andConvincing Support

The importance of having a convincing argument in argumentative
writing has been heavily emphasized by almost everyone who teaches,
writes, or cares about the subject. But well-known sources remain largely
unclear as to how such an argument can be constructed. Many students,
including those who have learned about logic before, do not know how theconstruction should start and proceed. This is because conventional
studies of logic do not really teach argument construction. The focus of
those studies lies in the methods and principles used to assess whether anexisting argument is correct or incorrect (Copi and Cohen 2005: 4).
However, if one is to build an argument from scratch, then one would haveto know where to start, and what to do next. The conventional logic
studies are helpless at this level.
To help our students learn to construct arguments effectively, W. L. Lai(e.g. 2014, 2016) has developed a series of recipes and templates thatprovide step-by-step guidance on how to build a thesis statement fromscratch, how to build the first premise based on the thesis statement, andhow to build the second premise based on the first. The recipes andtemplates are not designed to teach how to build a perfect thesis
statement and argument. They are designed to help students understandwhat components should be incorporated into the construction process,and most importantly, how the components should be linked together.
In section 4, we shall explain how the thesis statement recipe is used in
one of our courses. The LTA “recipes” are step-by-step guides toconstructing logical arguments, provided as a first step for students who
are unfamiliar with the process.

4．Pedagogical Application for Research Writing
The idea that effective research writing must have a clear thesis
statement and use logical argument with relevant content may seem likesecond nature to experienced academics. But novice researchers need todevelop this understanding over time. Both the arguments underlying277

research writing and the mechanics of producing such writing must be
learned. It is not sufficient to show learners models of finished papers andexpect them to intuit the logic underlying them. Students whose only
experience of research writing is producing basic reports may have a very
different understanding of what the models show than their teachers do(Wells 1993). Therefore, it can be useful to work through examples of thethesis statement recipe or other similar techniques in a writing seminar.
By working together, students may become more able to apply thetechniques, and teachers may acquire greater awareness of the specificdifficulties faced by a student or group of students. It is less important for
student-writers to have a theory of argumentation than to be able to apply
effective argument in their own writing.
For example, in one course at Nagoya University the thesis statement
recipe is introduced in four steps over the course of two weekly seminar
meetings. Prior to the first of these meetings, participants read about thethesis statement recipe (Lai 2013). During the first meeting, the instructor
presents the definition of a thesis statement, and students work together
to critique various sentences as acceptable or unacceptable as thesis
statements. Following this meeting, each student produces a thesis
statement for a paper she or he is working on, or expects to work on in the
future. Students send these statements to the instructor prior to the next
meeting. During the second of the two meetings, students’ proposed thesis
statements are presented to the class, without the author’s name. All
participants in the seminar then work together to suggest ways to makethe proposed thesis statement clearer, more specific, and less ambiguous.
The thesis statement recipe (Lai 2013) comprises eight steps. First, theauthor names the topic of the research with a noun phrase. Next, the nounphrase is used as the subject of a sentence that elaborates the nature of
the research. In the third step, this sentence is transformed into a question.
By turning the sentence into a how or why question, the author begins tocommit to a more specific line of inquiry or investigation. The fourth stepis to provide a hypothetical answer to the question. If, as is often the caseduring graduate seminars, the author is applying this recipe to planned
research, the hypothetical answer provides a hypothesis to be tested−a278

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

process of abduction. If the answer is based on completed research, thisanswer provides the rudiments of a thesis to be supported in the paper.
The fifth step refines this rudimentary thesis or hypothesis into astatement by summarizing it in one sentence, though in some cases a small
number of very closely linked sentences may suffice. The sixth step of therecipe is to clarify the relationship between the subject and the predicateof the statement. It is often difficult, but is crucial for authors to makeexplicit the links among elements of their own thinking. Step seven is tohighlight and eliminate ambiguities in the thesis statement. This may
include lexical or structural ambiguity, as well as vagueness and otherthreats to clear expression. Finally, step eight is the presentation of thepreliminary thesis statement or hypothesis.
In the first of two seminar meetings, participants discuss the definitionof a thesis statement, and work through examples of sentences that are
not sufficient as thesis statements.
For this seminar a thesis statement is defined as (1) a factual statement,(2) that makes an objectively testable claim about the world, (3) is
non-trivial to debate, and (4) is specific enough to treat completely within
the span of a given piece of writing. To help participants understand theseelements, the instructor presents a series of sentences and asks
participants to decide whether they are factual, objective, non-trivial, andsufficiently specific. The series of examples ends with a paraphrase of theactual thesis of a scholarly publication.
As described above, decisions that are second nature to experienced
writers are not transparent to novices. It is therefore useful to work fromvery simple judgments to increasingly nuanced ones in this exercise.
Participants have no difficulty in rejecting examples that are notstatements. Even so, it is useful to present non-factual sentences including
a question. This reinforces the idea that a thesis statement is not the sameas a research question; it is a proposed answer to the question. The
instructor then provides subjective as well as objective statements. It canbe useful at this stage to present objective statements that relate to
subjective opinions. For example, “Most people think the current
government is doing a good job” is objective: It is either true, if indeed a279

majority of people share that opinion, or untrue otherwise. Discussing
objective statements about opinions is a step toward more complex
judgments about writing.
Participants are next provided with a number of objective statements,
some of which are trivial. The definition of “trivial” is, of course, notstraightforward. As with objective statements about opinions, it can be
useful to discuss statements that may or may not be considered trivial.
Simple descriptive statistics, for example, may be too trivial for some
types of research but may be appropriate for certain types of survey. This
allows for discussion of different kinds of claims, as well as the kinds ofdata useful for different questions. Finally, participants are provided withvarious non-trivial statements, including at least one which paraphrases
the conclusion of a research publication. Again, they debate the usefulnessof the various statements for research writing. Finally, they are shown apublished abstract that contains a statement they have been debating.
This helps cement the importance of a thesis statement in writing for
publication.
During the same meeting, the instructor illustrates a “worked example”
of Lai’s thesis statement recipe. The instructor illustrates each of the eightsteps with an example worked out in advance. It can also be useful to elicit
topics, predicates, and questions from seminar participants. In this case,more time should be allowed to elicit, discuss, and agree upon usefulexamples.
At the next meeting, participants help one another refine their own
thesis statements. Following the first seminar meeting, all participants are
asked to create a preliminary thesis statement for their own research
writing. These statements are sent to the instructor just before the next
seminar meeting. The instructor prepares slides with each preliminary
thesis statement, removing author’s names and sometimes correcting
minor language errors, if it is straightforward to do so.
Seminar participants cooperate to critique one another’s anonymized
thesis statements and offer suggestions for improving them. This processof peer review not only helps each author to identify and understandproblems with the thesis statement. It also requires other participants to280

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentationreflect on the variety of pitfalls that can make a thesis statement
ambiguous, unclear, or insufficiently specific.

5．Implementation for Presentations
As Jonathon Schwabish observes, “Presenting is a fundamentallydifferent form of communication than writing” (Schwabish 2017: 2). In fact,even the goals of presenting are often quite different, at least in emphasis,to that of journal articles or dissertations. Occurring at various points in
the research cycle, presentations may be a means of reporting results, but
are quite often (more often than is the case with those written channels)
undertaken by researchers before conclusive results have been achieved,
primarily in order to garner feedback that might enhance the research inprogress. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that writing usually plays animportant role in the presentation process, ideally in a script (Wallwork2010) and almost always in the preparation of an abstract/proposal. Above
all, focusing on a concise thesis (or hypothesis) statement and clearly
articulated logical support has considerable value for presentations andcourses dealing with the subject. This can be identified in two strongly
related areas, the creation of an abstract and the organization of the actual
presentation around a clearly articulated point, ideally a thesis statement
or statement of hypothesis.
5.1

The presentation abstract

It is difficult to overestimate how important it is that researchers
become adept at writing presentation abstracts. Much as an article
abstract facilitates a potential reader’s decision to read or not,presentation abstracts commonly appear in conference booklets or web
pages to help attendees make quick, informed decisions about which
sessions or individual papers they will attend. But a presentation abstract
has another and more critical function: it is often used as the sole or
primary basis upon which conference organizers determine whether apaper will be accepted for presentation in the first place. Depending on theconference, this can be a highly competitive endeavor. Much is riding on

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that abstract, with organizers typically preferring, even demanding, that
an abstract satisfy certain criteria, particularly that it contains a clear andsignificant idea and that it offers convincing support, or a credible method
for gaining such support, for that idea. A systematic approach toward
writing clear (hypo)thesis statements within logically organized andconvincing abstracts is obviously of extraordinary benefit in satisfying thedemands, including stringent word limits, often set by review committees.
For that reason, a presentation course may from early on have students
read and analyze presentation abstracts, identifying a thesis statement orstatement of purpose (or the unfortunate absence of this) and breaking theentire text down into its component parts. From there, question prompts
as per the recipe method can be used to have students consider their own
research in terms of such elements. Finally, perhaps with the aid of someappropriate vocabulary, students are encouraged to generate an abstractof their own. That can serve as the basis for a presentation they will makein class, especially with improvement through feedback from peers andthe instructor. It can also serve not only as a model for future “real world”
presentation abstracts they are likely to write, but actually help themmethodically, logically organize their research work as a whole. In thissense, the fact that abstracts usually need to be prepared well before theactual delivery of a presentation can be seen as a blessing with regard toboth the presentation and the orderly advancement of the researcher’s
project.
There is another respect in which the presentation abstract has a
special significance: it serves as a platform to engender the focus, clear
logical flow and concision presenters constantly wrestle with. Researchpresentations need to communicate complex new content in real time,
primarily through speech and visual display, to audiences that may or may
not be native speakers of the language, may or may not be specialists inthe field − all within prescribed time limits. That challenge requires
extraordinary attention to communicative efficacy, something that is notalways obvious to researchers themselves; they may misguidedly assume
preparation to be simply a matter of pasting an article or notes onto slides
and reading through them. Of course, we attempt to divest students of282

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentationthat idea, and working on an abstract built around an explicitly statedassertion provides a way to make the discipline and strategic
decision-making involved in presentation preparation concrete.
5.2

Presenting around a Point

In teaching presentations and guiding students through the constructionof their own presentations, we are not alone in encouraging placement of athesis statement, or at the very least a concise statement of what the
research has set out to determine, at the beginning of the presentation
where practicable. This would entail, for example, not relying on astatement as vague and neutral as “We studied...” but rather saying “Ourstudy demonstrates that....” Emphasizing the communicative dimension ofpresentations, Schwabish writes, “If you don’t share your conclusions or
the implications of your work up front your audience can’t see how thepieces−the previous literature, your data, and your methods−fit together”(Schwabish 2017: 12). Indeed, this is a common cause of comprehension
problems for research presentation audiences. Particularly in disciplines
where the IMRaD (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion)
structure for articles and presentations is expected, it is easy forpresenters to believe they are doing enough if they simply fill the I, M, R
and D boxes; there are even slideshow templates available to make thetask a very simple, mechanical peg-in-hole operation. The downside to thatis that there may be no slide dedicated to stating what the researcher
believes has been proven or is expecting to prove. Even if there is, it may
not be clear to the audience, or even to the speaker sometimes, that this isthe very crux and that everything else is subordinate to that statement,
serving to support it, or at least point towards methods of validation. The
box-filling approach thus has a tendency to create disjunction between
elements within the presentation, primarily because it lacks an underlying
logical argument propelling and connecting them. In short, because thepresentation lacks the natural wellspring of motivation, the delineation of
purpose provided by a thesis statement, it fails to logically flow. As alluded
to above in relation to writing, a tendency to overwhelm an audience withdata, the so-called “data dump,” may then take over (see Weissmann 2008).

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This is not to say that we dogmatically insist that the introduction mustin all cases contain a thesis statement. In certain fields and within certain
conference organizations, there are conventions militating that thepresentation work from previous studies through methodology and results
before explicitly stating a position. In those cases a research question istypically given in the introduction that will be answered later. There arealso cultural expectations that we would be foolish to simply ignore. Since
our primary mission is to facilitate researchers’ effective communicationof their work, we understand that in some cases the best we can do is toshow the logical and communicative benefits of an upfront statement ofthesis and encourage researchers to ensure they have something akin to athesis statement in mind as the principle guiding element as they prepare
and present. We can also make them aware of other factors that might befostering a reluctance to posit the thesis early, such as the belief that bydeferring the statement of position one generates suspense and therefore
interest in the audience, or (again this may vary across individuals andcultures) a disinclination to expose oneself by stating a position without
first erecting a solid foundation, or wall, of evidential and logical support.
Such perceived ‘benefits’ may be more than offset, we would suggest,
firstly by the improved cogency and communicative efficacy offered by
the upfront statement of a provable point and also by the likelihood that an
audience will better be able to critically test the content throughout thepresentation, and therefore give more useful feedback, if they know fromnear the beginning what the speaker’s position is. Michael Alleyemphasizes an often forgotten reality, “presentation is a two-way form ofcommunication” (Alley 2003: 189); presentations may be a way ofimpressing others with one’s work, but are also part of a cooperative (allthe while critical) endeavor undertaken by presenters and audiences
together to produce better research results.

284

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

6．Applications in a Multilingual and Multidisciplinary Research
Environment
As English dominates international academic organizations, for mostresearchers the mastery of academic writing or presenting requires firstmastering a foreign language, and then mastering a particular register ofthis foreign language, academic communication. In this section we address
how a logical thinking approach is useful for communicating researchacross boundaries of language, culture, and discipline.
Because the specific purposes of research communication are the sameacross languages, the structure of a research paper written in English
resembles research writing in French, German or Japanese more than it
doescasualEnglish(Labov 2006).

Progressing

inamultilingual

environment is a major difficulty and important challenge researchers
have to face in the international academic world, so any efficient academic
communication should take this point into consideration.
6.1

Language, culture and disciplinary inferences

The challenge of academic communication can be summarized as in theabove figure showing 3 intersecting circles associating language, culture
and logical thinking. Although the nature of interaction between language
and culture is debated (e.g. Beckner et al. 2009, Berwick et al. 2013), it isassumed that the 3 circles have reciprocal influence, even if it is impossible
to concretely determine the degrees of such influence. In this figure
culture and language develop, exchange, and operate simultaneously as apart of academic communication. Edward Sapir argues that linguistic
phenomena are cultural phenomena, and linguistic behaviors such as
speech and written language include a symbolic dimension, “for the sounds
and marks used therein obviously have no meaning in themselves and canhave significance only for those who know how to interpret them in termsof that to which they refer” (Sapir 1934: 492). What is called logical thinking
is then influenced by the characteristics of the language as well as theculture of the writer and their language skill.

285

Source: authors

Figure 1

The Challenge of Academic Communication in a Foreign Language

The importance of a recipe is fundamental while teaching students oryoung researchers who need to publish in a foreign language. Logicalthinking is a key element that they can share, as writers, with theirevaluators and then with their readers. Independently of the language, thebases of effective writing lie in the clarity of the thesis statement and thequality of the support. Logical thinking operates similarly across different
academic cultures.
Success in academic communication is a question of argumentation andthe capacity to predict the readers’ or audience’s expectations. As Ito(2015) wrote, “academic writing is a kind of sociolect.” Indeed, academic
writing can be considered as a form of communication specific to a socialgroup, in this case, researchers. Faced with a scientific article,
non-specialists may feel excluded because of language, even if they arenative speakers of the language. But the difficulty is deeper and appears in
different scales. Even if they are sharing the same sociolect, writers fromthe same discipline but from different countries and speaking different

286

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

languages can have difficulty communicating. The issue may not be thequality of the research or the thesis statement as such but the structure of
the argumentation. This point, especially the structuration of the writing,is strongly influenced by the language, the culture and the educational
background of the writer. Good research communication expressed in aforeign language cannot be merely literal translation.
6.2

A good international paper cannot be a simple translation

The structure of the argumentation is one of the key aspects of theacademic writing sociolect, influenced by national academic cultures andalso by each scientific discipline. One might take as an example anexperience that many reviewers of academic journals may share when
they have to evaluate a translated article of a non-native author. In thecase of French reviewers of a paper by Japanese authors, for example, anarticle may be difficult to understand, even if the reviewers of the same
discipline can comprehend the scientific import of the article (Baumert2017). The key points of an evaluation appear problematic for texts
translated from Japanese and reviewers may note problems with overalllogic, article structure, and scientific positioning that come from theeffects of language and culture. Most significantly, reviewers faceparticular trouble when the thesis statement and major conclusions of anarticle are not clearly expressed within the introduction and theconclusion.
In the academic cultures of the French and Japanese humanities suchmisunderstanding may be caused by different visions of what thestructure of a journal article should be. For Yumi Takagaki, who isengaged in research about text organization in French and Japanese, these
problems originate from different literary traditions and expectations in
the two cultures, along with education. From an outside point of view,
French academic texts appear strongly organized, and the structure isstandardized, whereas Japanese academic texts may appear more like afree-flowing discourse (Takagaki 2015). But this does not imply that theJapanese texts are more “natural.” There is often a structure more
complex than the French standard in Japanese texts crafted to appear287

natural. This includes a thesis statement, although it is intentionallyexpressed indirectly. The reason for this is mainly that French articles are
influenced by the dissertation 3) and Japanese students and scholars’ texts
are more influenced by the zuihitsu 4) style. According to Takagaki, “three
French rhetorical conventions” can be obstacles for Japanese writers: “animpersonal mode, restriction of spontaneity, and the importance of textplanning” (Takagaki 2015: 29). In particular, Takagi points out the difficulty
faced by Japanese learners’ of French in their paragraph organization, as
often observed in their French compositions.
This example concerning French and Japanese could be applied to otherlanguage pairs. It suggests that successful research communication should
begin with a clear and logical argument, and proceed to use the correct“dress code” to effectively convince the reader to accept its premises. To
that end, the structure appears as a cultural filter between the reader andthe writer. Many students and young scholars are not aware of this fact,
believing that their text structure and organization are a universal schema.
This misunderstanding leads them to write papers in foreign languages
using a schema that will be systematically devalued by those assessing the
work.
6.3

The Benefits of a Cross-cultural Writing Approach

In order to help researchers negotiate this complexity, we emphasize
that, despite differences across language and disciplines, the bases of a
research paper tend to be the same. At the draft level, a clear thesis
statement is necessary even for academic cultures that do not typicallypresent this directly in their academic communication. Japanese academic
culture, especially in the humanities, provides a perfect example. We havealready pointed out that the appearance of a free-flowing discourse does
not mean there is no thesis or main idea, because the writer will have toconvince the reader to think in his or her way. Behind the process ofwriting a final version, the need for a recipe to build a thesis statement anda logical argument are fundamental. For students coming from thoseacademic cultures of apparently free-flowing discourse, learning theimportance of the logical basis is much more difficult because the basis is288

Implementing a Logical Thinking Approach for Education in Research Writing and Presentation

typically hidden.
Learning about academic writing in order to publish papers in a foreign
language drives students to consider the cultural elements operating
through the language they wish to publish in (Menant 2015). Learning
other cultural systems can lead to different ideas and might open up otherperspectives, because writing is not only a presentation of data but asignificant part of the research process (Wadden 2015). To this end,
research writing must be both apropos in its form and logical in its
construction. The approach described in this paper, starting from thethesis statement to the adaptation of the best argumentative structure to
the reader’s culture, helps researchers to communicate across boundaries,
because the structuration of the ideas is important, not only to convince
the reader, but to advance scientific understanding.

7．Conclusion
This paper has shown how LTA can be widely applied and implemented
in research writing and presentation courses across languages andcultures. We started by showing the need for general education courses in
the current system of higher education in Japan, explaining why it isimportant to start the research process with a thesis statement. Then we
moved on to show how LTA is actually implemented in a research writing
course, and how conference preparations can equally benefit from theguidance of a thesis statement. The paper ended with a suggestion thatthe application and implementation of LTA are not restricted by any
particular language, discipline or culture. While this paper has not sought
to show exactly how a thesis statement may be developed into a logicallyconvincing argument, which is a major part of LTA, this is discussed
elsewhere, for example, in Lai (2014). Once the requisite explanations of
LTA and its implementation are provided, this method has the potential to
become a model for general education for all graduate students and young
researchers.

289

Notes1）Editorial criteria and processes, Nature.
(https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes, 2018.10.30)
2) The example here was inspired by John Austin’s (1962) example about a pig
in his account on evidence.
3) The dissertation (sometime called composition) is an organized exercise ofargumentation, generally and ideally in three parts (an introduction, a development and a conclusion) according to a thesis statement (problématique ).
4) The zuihitsu is a free-form style in which elements are arranged byassociations of meaning and reflect the will of the author rather than astandard order.

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研究論文・学術プレゼンテーション指導のための
ロジカル・シンキング・アプローチの実践
ウェイリン・ライ*
チャド・ニレップ**
マーク・ウィークス***ニコラ・ボーメール****
戸田山 和久*****＜要旨＞

国際水準の論文を書くには、適切で理にかなった言語使用、論拠の配分、明確で論理的な主張などが求められる。ライティング指導ではレトリックのつながりが重視されたり、第二言語使用者には文法的な重要性が強調される傾向があるものの、研究論文における論理の重要性はあまり強調されてこなかった。そのため、多くの大学院生や若手研究者は、どのようにすれば自分の研究を明確で説得力ある形で伝えらえるかを、十分に理解しているとは言えない。「論理思考アプロー
チ」は、まず論文の主張を明確にした上で、研究活動を通じてその論を論理的かつ説得的にしていくプロセスであるが、このアプローチが大学院生や若手研究者に不可欠である。本論文は、アカデミックなコ
ミュニケーションスキルを扱う教育において、この論理思考アプロー
チをどのように実践するかを論じる。具体的には、大学院生を対象としてライティングスキル獲得支援のために開発したプログラムの詳細を論じる。また、学術論文を書くだけでなく、論拠や論証を強調した指導を行うことで、アブストラクトの作成や口頭発表にも有益であることを論じる。これは、専門分野や領域ごとの文化の枠を超えたコ
ミュニケーションにおいても重要な点である。

*名古屋大学教養教育院・准教授**名古屋大学教養教育院・准教授***名古屋大学教養教育院・准教授****名古屋大学教養教育院・准教授*****名古屋大学大学院情報学研究科・教授

293