For the purpose of deepening our school of SGH research topics in English, Super Global Summer Courses was carried out with a cooperation of The Department of Intercultural Communication at Rikkyo University
This year, 10 students attended this 3 day course at the campus of Rikkyo University.
Course was proceed in daily lectures by 3 university teachers.
On the first day, 5 students participated to the lecture “Language Globalization and Social Contexts” by Kazumi Namiki.
They learned world’s circumstances of the use of English and the social role of the use of language from the perspective of sociolinguistics.
It was conducted in all-English, but students deeply understood the content and were able to response to the questions asked by Prof. Namiki.
“In addition to the American and British English, there is a variety of English,” said Prof. Namiki.
From students, one shared her experience; “when I came back from study abroad in Australia, I knew that the mainstream of the world was American English, and I felt indebted”. While discussing what each experienced or heard, they re-recognized the “word” from the view of sociolinguistics.
On the second day, 10 students showed up to the lecture of “International Organization in Poverty” by the assistant professor of the university, Stephan Johnson.
Based on what has been researched, students discussed how they can resolve the world’s poverty in groups. Even Prof. Johnson also joined to the groups and activated the discussion.
” What is poverty?” “How can we define it?”
It was a lecture of making a value to not just memorizing original thoughts but having your own opinions towards the problems. Students went back to the root of things and joined the discussion with ownership by asking themselves in head, “What do I think?”.
Moreover, they changed the group again, and talked about the new topic; “If you were a person of the government, how do you define poverty?” They made deep talk with the idea of “poverty”.
On the last day, Prof. Paul Cunningham’s “Culture, Language and Communication in Diplomacy” course was held.
Seven students attended to the lecture of the exploration of culture, language, and communication that are required at the time of excellent diplomat training in the United States.
First, Prof. Cunningham shared his own thoughts towards culture and communication. Then, students answered to his questions and summarized their thoughts in group discussions.
“What is Intercultural Communication?”
Each expressed their own views to the “Cross-Cultural Understanding” while exchanging different answers with each other.
“Although I am not good at English, professors taught us in a professional point of view. I was able to deepen the understandings of the areas of interest in this 3 days.” “I am glad that I was able to use knowledge that I learn at World Studies.” After the end of 3 day course, students conveyed the impression in the full expression.
They left the campus full of summer sunshine, gaining the learning needed to play an active role in the field of interest in the future.