Kyushu University: Online international debate workshop for students in Japan and Korea

From February 18 to 20, 2022, a workshop on English debate was held with the participation of students from Kyushu U, Ewha Womans University, and SolBridge International School of Business in Korea.

On the first and second days, Assistant Professor Peter Kipp of Ewha Womans University was invited as a lecturer, and a variety of lectures on various contents and debate exercises were conducted. On the third day, 16 teams participated in an English debate tournament, where they practiced what they had learned in the workshop and deepened their interaction with each other.

Hina Namisaki, a first-year student (School of Economics), won the tournament and was awarded the Best Speaker in the Grand Finals. “During the time to share debate ideas with students in Korea, I received advice on my ideas, and we worked together to come up with issues that I could not immediately come to my mind. I am glad that I enjoyed the lecture and tournament with students in Korea in the workshop,” she commented. Students who participated in the event also commented,” I enjoyed this valuable opportunity to interact with students from overseas” and “The fluency of English spoken by Korean people was so good that it inspired me to study English even harder.” Those comments show that it was a valuable opportunity to interact with each other.

As Kyushu U has a university-level official exchange agreement with Ewha Womans University and the Faculty of Languages Cultures’ English Department and Ewha’s counterpart has a memorandum of understanding (MOU), we are planning to deepen our cooperation in debate education further.

This workshop was held as part of the KIKAN general education course “Academic English: Intensive Course (Debating in English),” and Kyushu U’s undergraduate students who satisfy the requirements, including pre-course assignments, will receive the university credits.