bakayama class #3

Class #3 on the Bakayama. Today we talked about how International Christian University isn’t “international”. When I read Rab’s e-mail, I thought,  "how can we IAs can be potentially harmful and intimidating to the other streams?" I studied French for about five years, so my level of French is probably analogous to the English level of Stream 3 or 4. As a student, I would be delighted to have fluent French speaking students in my class because they will motivate me to strive for more. They will be my goal. After all, I think that the best way to improve any skill is to work alongside someone who is more experienced because that person’s presence will naturally compel you to work hard. This may be a bad example, but when running a 50m race, one records a faster time running alongside someone who is faster than him or her than racing against a slower or equal person. According to Rab, Ms. Iwata mentioned that stream 3 and 4 students will be “demotivated” by us speaking fluent English. However, most of us in stream 1 probably went through this when we first went overseas. We were thrown into an environment where everyone spoke better English (or another language) than us, and the result of that is our fluent English. Before insisting that our presence in stream 3’s and 4’s ELA classes is harmful, I think this director should ask the students’ opinions, whether they will actually will be “demotivated” or not. I doubt that every single student in stream 3 and 4 are against this plan of us visiting their classes. Some of them must have entered ICU with a goal of acquiring sufficient English to write academic essays, so they may desire some stimulus. I just think that she shouldn’t be the one who decides this; the students’ voices should be first priority.