The first-year students of the International course attended three-day English camp at the Asahi Kogen Shonen Shizen no Ie from October 25th (Wednesday) to October 27th (Friday), where they learned all in English. The moment they got on the departure bus, they switched from Japanese to English. We headed to Asahi Kogen with eight instructors of various nationalities.
１st day
The final goal of this English camp is to debate in English. There were 5 one-hour lessons on the first day. The program started with ice breaker activities, followed by speaking training, learning about cross-cultural understanding and critical thinking skills, and ended with playing sports and games in English.
2nd day
There was already a lot of content from the first day, but on the second day they had a total of 8 lessons from morning to night, and had even more English training. In the morning, they studied intercultural understanding 2, logical speaking, and the basics of debate. The instructors were from many different countries, including France, Singapore, Malaysia, Oman, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Jamaica, making it a true cross-cultural understanding course. In the afternoon, they got into serious practice for the debate, where they practiced how to think and express their opinions from both the pro and con sides of the topic.
3rd day
The final day was the actual debate match. The debate was held on two topics: “All classes should be taught online” and “All shopping should use electronic payments, not cash.” The students were split into four groups, and they had two pairs of debates. The winning team of each pair advanced to the finals. At the end, we moved to a large auditorium and held the final debate match in a formal style. The final teams engaged in a heated debate match, and their persuasive opinions received applause from other students in the audience. Regardless of whether they won or lost, the students looked very happy with the satisfaction of having completed the three days. I am very proud of all the students who studied well, had fun, and did their best in English over the three days.
