午夜剧场

Foreign Language Courses | Foreign Language I / English Seminar

One of the attractions of the English Seminar is that students can choose a theme that interests them from a wide variety of topics. As my specialty is sociology and historical sociology, I offer seminars on themes such as the history of the "modern family" and family sociology, and the history of modern sports and sports sociology. While the assignments, texts, and other materials differ for the intermediate, advanced, and special advanced level seminars, all levels incorporate a great deal of discussion, and students also give presentations and write reports. For example, in a seminar on the theme of the modern family, we read texts on American family history while discussing Japanese circumstances from a comparative Japan-U.S. perspective, such as the declining birthrate, rising unmarried and divorce rates, and phenomena like "parasite singles" and "NEETs." Students then individually pursue a topic of particular interest related to the contemporary family or family history and write a report based on their research findings.

What is the significance of learning something "in" English, rather than just learning "about" English, especially in a university setting? I believe it all comes down to the fact that a university is a place where one can broaden their academic horizons with cutting-edge knowledge and also acquire a "liberal arts education" that adds depth to character formation, making the learning process all the more stimulating. Furthermore, I believe the English Seminar represents an approach to English education that is suited to our times. In the past, it may have been sufficient to understand English content by first translating it into Japanese, but times have changed. There are various names to describe this era—"globalization," "information society," "knowledge society," "post-industrial society," "post-modern society," and so on—but it is an age of remarkable exchange of information and people. The reality is that translating English into Japanese before understanding it is no longer viable for communication, nor does it allow one to keep up with the extremely fast pace at which information and technology are updated. I believe that the significance of the English Seminar—learning something "in" English, not "about" English—is that it provides the very training that our era demands.

(Professor David Knotter)