Developing a course in debate for Low-Level English: Foundation Critical Thinking Skills

Starting in April of 1998 at KUT second year students will take two quarters of what has been labelled DEBATE but what will devolve into the course I'm designing, which might well be called INTRODUCTION TO CRITICAL THINKING. This course will grow from simple rhetoric exercises into full-on Edward de Bono style exercises and simple searches for information that answers real-world questions.

Professor Nojiri of the Physics department says that he suspects that English is a good matrix for the teaching of thinking skills, given that (a) it is a "more logical" language than Japanese, and (b) it is a fresh arena for expressing thoughts and opinions. I tend to agree, based on the experiences I had in first semester seminars, where I piloted a number of "critical thinking" activities targeted at upper elementary and junior secondary students in Canada and the U.S. I did survey the students as to the content and linguistic difficulty of each activity, so if any faculty members would like to see that feedback, please feel free to contact me, either in person or at lawrie@info.kochi-tech.ac.jp.

Please look at the assignments I've designed.
Students: please feel free to study before the course starts.