We first year students in the GV Program take a News Reading Seminar once a week. It isa seminar where we read news articles and then discuss the topic with others in English for one and half hour. We read a few news articles on a certain topic before the seminar day every week. In each session, we think about the topic of news articles with others and discuss several questions related to the topic. We have learned so many things through this seminar so far, and there are three main things I want to share with you. First, we had the opportunity to improve our reading skill by dealing with long and not easy articles. The news articles we have addressed in our session were selected from specific news stories,so sometimes it was difficult for us to interpret the context of the news or the meaning of professional English expressions. However, the more opportunities I read news articles, the less difficulty I came to feel. Also, in every class, our tutor helped us understand better. This process helped us acquire new vocabulary words or expressions and improve our reading skills. Second, wewere able to learn important issues that we must know in a globalized world. We actually learned about COVID-19, protests in Hong Kong, plastic bags and so on, which may be familiar with our life these days. For example, with regard to COVID-19, we found out that it was difficult for a government to decide how to regulate people in the country so as not to spread the infection. In relation to protests in Hong Kong, we learned that not only Hong Kong but also many other countries may have to pay attention to the situation in Hong Kong. It was a great opportunity to think about how we should protect our global society from now on, when we read the articles about charging for shopping bags. In fact, these issues may be so familiar that we have probably already thought about their problems or solutions in daily life. However, we came to learn that those issues are actually more profound after reading and discussing the articles. What made it more complicated was that many issues were related to law. Like these three topics, many problems in the world are often deeply related to law, so it is important for law students to understand such important issues.At the same time, getting knowledge not only about Japanese issues but also about international issues is necessary for us, because we will be working in international environments in the future. Third, it was so interesting for me to know the ideas that were different from mine through the discussion with other members. Not everyone has the same opinion about one issue and each member has his or her own opinion about every issue. By sharing our ideas on the same issue, we came to learn new points of view and cultivate our diverse perspectives. This ability will be useful when we think or talk about new issues with other people. Among many other attractive points of the news reading seminar, these three points are basic skills we need to acquire to be global professionals in the future. I hope we can continue to improve our English skills and broaden our perspectives by reading news articles related to international issues, thinking about the problems and solutions, and sharing the ideas with other members through this seminar.
(日高 美優)