Integrating a Debate Activity into an Intermediate Japanese Class:

A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Fumie Kato

UNC-Charlotte

1. Introduction

In my experience teaching Japanese as a foreign language, promoting communicative

proficiency in higher education is particularly difficult, especially if the foreign language is seen

as a minor foreign language in the area. For these languages, learners seldom have opportunities

to speak or converse in the target language learned in the classroom. It is difficult to find native

speaker conversation partners outside of the classroom, with perhaps the exception of utilizing

internet devices, such as Skype or Line. Thus, speaking practice for these learners in social

contexts is extremely rare.

Japanese is categorized as a minor foreign language in the United States, so Japanese

learners here struggle to increase their oral abilities. Many students obtaining a Bachelor’s

degree in Japanese report regretting that they did not achieve a higher level of oral competency

before their graduation. In order to solve this problem, a class titled “Japanese Oral

Communication” was offered in Spring 2016 in a United States southeastern regional university

to increase students’ opportunities to use their foreign language abilities in the classroom.

Several teaching methods for enhancing communicative abilities were conducted during class,

including a debate activity.

In the United States and abroad, debate clubs are common, but there are few examples of

using similar structured debates as a class activity in a foreign language setting (Morse 108).
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 2
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Most universities in the United States, with perhaps the exception of regions such as New York

and Los Angeles, offer limited advanced level Japanese classes. Japanese is also recognized as

being one of the most difficult foreign languages to master for native speakers of English (Jordan

and Lambert). Therefore, there was concern that a debate activity might be too difficult for

intermediate Japanese language learners in America. Additionally, the whole class-hour could

not be solely devoted to the debate activity, as other activities were also integrated into the class.

This means that students might not have enough time for the debate activity itself, which could

make the activity potentially even more difficult. For these reasons, there were concerns that the

activity might feel burdensome to the learners, cause them frustration, or raise their anxiety.

Therefore, the debate activity was integrated into the class with careful consideration of the

procedures in order to limit tension and frustration, and to increase their opportunities to speak.

This paper reports the outcomes of the integration in terms of suitability and the possibility of

integrating a debate activity into an intermediate Japanese language learners’ class.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Content Based Instruction

Content Based Instruction (hereafter, “CBI”) emerged a few decades ago and is seen as

an effective language teaching and learning method (Heo 25). CBI was first introduced in

immersion programs in Canada and the United States, and has now spread all over the world

(Davies). CBI is not integrated into a regular language class. Instructors of CBI do not teach the

language itself; learners in CBI study some content with use of their target language, and

consequently learn the target language (Iberri-Shea 129). Ellis emphasized that instructors need

to conduct meaningful activities that decrease learners’ anxiety and promote their interests (161).
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 3
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Therefore, CBI is a language learning method in which students learn their favorite academic

topics while they acquire language actively. Krashen advocates the differences between

“learning” a foreign, or second language, and “acquisition” of a mother tongue (17). CBI is

effective for acquiring foreign/second languages (Heo 25). Though everyone is able to “learn” a

foreign or second language, another step is needed to “acquire” it, so that it can be used in daily

life. Debate is widely considered to be an activity that can help a learner progress to the next

step, i.e., acquisition, as noted by Iberri-Shea, “[d]ebates can play an important role in content-

based instruction (CBI)” (129). Debate activities focus on content, strategy, objective and

language, and thus require debaters to comprehend content clearly, gain conceptual knowledge,

practice critical thinking. Debates also promote collaborative learning and enhance positive and

negative assessment by using language in meaningful ways.

Students explore the topics of debate activities in advance to prepare for the actual

debate. In the preparation sessions, they use their target foreign language actively. Debate

activities are also characteristically learner-centered (Aclan and Aziz 14; Zare and Othman

1509). In learner-centered language learning, instructors play the role of facilitators, who suggest

to learners what they need to do. Students investigate the topics and construct their own

opinions, learning their target language at the same time, i.e., CBI (He 81).

2.2 Effects of Debating

Classroom debates have been found effective at enhancing foreign-language processing

because students must insist on their own opinions and refute others based on materials prepared

in advance, and because classroom debates increase opportunities for utterance and force

learners to conduct interact and cooperate as a team (Al-Marhooqi and Tabakow 425; Zare and
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 4
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Othman 1508). There are many reports on the effectiveness of integrating debate activities into

EFL classes outside the United States. For example, Lee examined pre- and posttest scores, and

found that students in an experimental group, which participated in classroom debates,

progressed significantly compared to a control group. He offered a debate class in order to

enhance learners’ English conversation abilities, and reports that a comparison of pre- and

posttest scores revealed that lexical richness and syntactic complexity were fostered in

participants, and that significant differences were found between the debate group and the

control group (79). Similarly, outcomes of qualitative analysis conducted by Aclan and Aziz,

who integrated a debate activity into their English conversation class, verified its effectiveness

(14). Al-Mahrooqi and Tabakow also introduced a debate activity into their English conversation

classes at universities in Oman and in Dubai, and reported that participants recognized

improvement in their English conversation abilities and confidence to speak English (426).

In insisting and refuting, as must be done in debate activities, students need a high level

of oral competency because their communication becomes complicated beyond that of general

conversation. In debates, participants need to listen to the other side’s argument clearly,

understand it, promptly respond, and refute it. Thus, debate activities are a superior teaching

method, which is the essence of the “communicative language teaching” (commonly recognized

as an effective approach to enhance oral abilities) (Zare and Othman 1509).

Debate activities are also well received because they have benefits beyond mere language

acquisition. For example, since preparation for these activities is conducted in groups, students

can also foster their teamwork skills (Iberri-Shea 132; Zare and Othman 1507) and learn from

one another despite differences in language abilities among participants. Furthermore, debates

are an excellent activity to promote critical thinking because participants must collect several
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 5
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

opinions, investigate, compare, evaluate and judge arguments in the preparation stage (Al-

Mahrooqi and Tabakow 424; Iberri-Shea 133; Morse 112; Worthen and Pack 5). When choosing

which side of a debate, they are frequently assigned to the side that does not align with their own

views. Accordingly, students often have a unique experience in that they are required to insist on

opinions opposed to their own ideas or that they barely encounter in their daily lives. These

activities have become a good way to practice opposing opinions and consider a wide range of

topics diversely. Through the repetition of such activities, students learn to face undesirable

matters in their real lives with flexible consideration and openness, and become able to consider

other viewpoints. Consequently, Zare and Othman say that students often “strengthen their

capability to handle disagreements outside of classroom” (1509).

Worthen and Pack illustrate that critical thinking is the ability to analyze controversial

statements, search out relevant information, test evidence and conclusions based on evidence,

recognize underlying assumptions, and draw and criticize inferences (4-5). Liu et al. integrated a

debate activity into their English conversation classes with freshmen and sophomores at a

university in Taiwan for one semester in order to promote these critical thinking skills. The

outcomes of their research suggested that in their freshman class Liu et al. did not see any

positive effects due to excessive difficulty, but they found improvement in their sophomore class,

though significant advancement was not recognized. They concluded that enhancing a skill as

complicated and high-level as critical thinking is difficult to accomplish in a short term, like one

semester (54).

Researchers also reported that participants could increase their writing competencies in a

foreign language because an essential task they need is to take notes of the data collected in the

preparation stage in the target language (Aclan and Aziz 7; Al-Mahrooqi and Tabakow 418; Zare
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 6
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

and Othman 1510). Aclan and Aziz detailed the effectiveness of the debating activity for

promoting writing abilities due to the necessity of learning essential vocabulary related to the

debate topics. According to their report, participants acquire new vocabulary through the

following four steps: 1) look up new words for the debating topic, 2) take note of them, 3)

translate them into their target language, and 4) use the words in the preparation stage, as well as

in the actual debate (7). Aclan and Aziz described how this process assisted in increasing their

students’ vocabularies as follows: the first three steps of this process were in the “learning” stage,

and the last step required students to employ the new words, which corresponds to “acquisition,”

as advocated by Krashen (13).

2.3 Methods for Debate Activity

There are many different styles of debating around the world, such as British

Parliamentary Format (henceforth, “BP”), American Parliament Debate, All-Asian Parliamentary

Format, and Karl Popper Debate. BP seems to be the standard form used at the university level.

BP consists of four members in one group such as prime minister, deputy prime minister,

member of government, and government whip, or leader of the opposition. Each speaker speaks

in rotation for approximately five to seven minutes. The participants are allowed to discuss or

talk for two to five minutes in order to rebut the other side. In the preparation stage, all team

members work to collect and research data to counterattack the opposition. Through these

processes, participants foster their teamwork abilities.

The difficulty of the debate activity varies depending on when the decision about which

side of the topic each team is assigned. If each team’s side is assigned at the outset, each team

can focus on the preparation of their topic. However, if sides are assigned on the day of the
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 7
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

actual debate, each team has to prepare, research and collect opinions for both sides of the topic

in the preparation stage, and cannot concentrate on their side until the day of the debate. This

format is obviously more difficult than the former method.

Debating is an activity representative of CBI (Iberri-Shea 136). Different from traditional

language education, the class is focused on the content of the topic to be debated and the actual

debate. Thus, when stating opinions in debate activities, small grammatical errors should be

ignored (Morse 110). During the preparation stage, the participants take notes and record several

positive and negative opinions on the topic. Minor grammatical mistakes should also be ignored

in this stage unless they would create misunderstanding.

A debate activity was created and integrated into an intermediate Japanese class in a

United States southeastern regional university considering the procedures and effects of debate

activities, as reported above. The debate activity was planned and put it into practice as follows:

a formal format was not used, the side of topic was selected at the outset, and easy topics were

chosen. Increasing writing ability was also made a goal of this activity, as many researchers

pointed out the benefits in the preparation stage. Figure 1 shows the procedures of the plan.

1 2 3

1 session
st
Preparation (6 times) Debating

-make groups -collect opinions (4 times) -decide which side

! !
-select a topic -practice in each group (2 times) states first

-select a leader -start debating

-select the side of the topic

4 5

Reflection For next debate

!
-reflection and peer review -select a topic
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 8
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

-points made to notes by -make groups

instructor -select a leader

-select the side of the topic

Figure 1. Procedures for Debate Activity

Questionnaires (see Appendix 1) were conducted in order to see if the debating activity

was helpful to increase intrinsic motivation1 and determine what effects the activity produced.

The following sections describe the procedures of the debate activity and report on the

suitability, possibility, and applicability of debate as a class activity in an intermediate Japanese

oral communication class. The outcomes were analyzed through participants’ reflections on the

activity.

3. Practical Method

A debate activity was introduced into a “Japanese oral communication” course as a

classroom activity in a United States southeastern regional university in the spring semester of

2016. Eight participants (male students: 5, female students: 3) registered for the course.

According to the instructor’s subjective observation regarding students’ oral competencies, their

levels were considered to be Intermediate-low or Intermediate-mid, based on the ACTFL’s Oral

Proficiency Interviews. Class activities consisted of three main activities, one of which was the

debate activity. Twenty-five minutes out of each 75-minute class were used for the debate

activity. The class was offered two times per week for 15 weeks during the semester. Thirty

minutes were used for actual debating. During the semester, debates were held four times using

four kinds of topics.

PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 9
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

In the last hour of the last class, questionnaires were conducted that consisted of eight

questions: seven Likert-type questions (ranging from 5, strongly agree, to 1, strongly disagree)

and one comment question on the debate activity. Though the instructor chose the first topic, "Is

it better to have a pet or not?”, students selected the other three topics after finishing the first

debate. The other three topics were:

1. Which is better, city life or country life?

2. Which is better, communicating through the internet or face to face?

3. Which is better, trips to foreign countries or domestic states?

The eight students were divided into two groups with four students each. Factors such as

grades, oral communication ability, personality, and gender differences were not taken into

consideration when dividing the students into groups, because it was impossible to consider all

of them. Therefore, groups were created randomly by drawing straws each time. Four debating

activities were conducted. All of the students took a turn as group leader once during the

semester. Leaders were required to lead their group in preparing for the debate. Additionally,

each leader was required to state the strongest opinion first in the actual debate, make a

vocabulary list of the difficult words, and show the list to the other group on the day, which

ensured that all of the members could have an equal opportunity for utterances in the actual

debating. In the interest of fairness, the side that groups had to argue for was decided by drawing

straws.

At the outset of the actual debate, one of the two leaders stated the strongest opinion, and

then one member of the opposing group stated an opinion in response. All of the students were

required to state their opinions at least three times. In the middle of debates, the instructor
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 10
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

reminded each group of which students had not yet achieved the three-time utterance rule. Each

leader tried to get these members to speak at least three times.

In total, six classes (25 minutes each) were used to prepare for the debate activity for

each topic. The instructor facilitated the following tasks for students in six preparation sessions:

1) explore/collect opinions of their side, 2) explore/collect opposing opinions, 3) consider and

write down counterarguments to opposing opinions, 4) add more opinions to tasks 1 - 3, both 5)

and 6) practice debating by further dividing into two subgroups within each group. In tasks 1 - 3

of these preparation sessions, all of the students were required to write their own opinions in

their notes in Japanese and to submit their notes after the debate. This task was conducted in

order to confirm if students had performed the activity seriously, to motivate students to write in

the target language, and to foster students to transfer their written target language into speaking

in the debate. Moreover, this activity increased students’ writing abilities as they wrote various

opinions in Japanese (utilizing all three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji)2.

Students received one out of 100 points (the class score) for this task by submitting their notes

for each topic, and thus received 4 points in total for the four topics during the semester. The

writing task was assessed in terms of effort, and one point was awarded if they wrote several

pages and 0.5 points if they wrote far less than other students.

The scores for the debate activity itself comprised approximately a quarter of the 100

points for the semester (24/100: 5 points for each debate session, 1 point for each note taking in

four debate sessions; (5+1) x 4 = 24). As there were quite large disparities in the oral abilities of

the eight students, their debate scores were determined not by the quality of their utterances, but

the quantity. Students received a full score if they achieved the three-utterance rule. This was

done in order to prevent anxiety and uneasiness in students with low oral communicative
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 11
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

competencies. Only two students did not achieve the three-utterance rule, and thus received four

out of five points in the first debate. All of the students received full scores during the rest of the

actual debates. Worthen and Pack said that the aim of a debate activity is not for one side to win,

but for students to investigate a topic and analyze outcomes (10). Thus, winning was considered

unimportant, and the outcome of debates, i.e., win or lose, was intentionally undefined, in order

to prevent the defeated from becoming demotivated. Instead, all student participants were

required to reflect and review the debate. The instructor took notice of the preparation, e.g.,

collecting as many opinions as possible in advance, emphasizing the importance and

effectiveness of writing down and taking notes of various views, strategizing to overcome

possible deadlocks, and finding effective counterarguments.

4. Outcomes

Questionnaires (not anonymous3) were conducted on the last day of the semester. One of

the eight participants was sick and could not take the questionnaire, so seven responses were

collected. Table 1 shows the results of the questionnaire.

Table 1

Participants’ View of the Debate Activity (N = 7)

Strongly Agree Neither Disagree Strongly

Agree Disagree

Q.1 Enjoyed 2 3 1 1 0

Q.2 Satisfied with challenge 3 3 1 0 0

Q.3 Improved my writing ability 4 2 1 0 0

Q.4 Like collaborative work 3 2 2 0 0

PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 12
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Q.5 Improved critical thinking skill 3 2 2 0 0

Q.6 Good to have easy topics 2 3 1 0 0

Q.7 Prefer to have difficult topics 0 1 4 1 1

As table 1 shows, five out of seven students (71 %) agreed with the first statement, “I enjoyed

conducting a debate activity.” The one student who disagreed with this statement was able to

speak Japanese better than his classmates. He wrote in the comment section, “I don't like

debating itself because some people became very passionate and emotional. I don't want to make

people angry.” However, he also wrote, “These topics were fun, though. Also, a good exercise

for talking about subjects in more depth than ordinary would [sic]. It is a good way to practice

speaking and thinking.” The students’ responses to the second statement showed that all

participants, except one, agreed that they were satisfied with the challenge of the activity.

Statement No. 3 was, “Writing opinions on the topics in Japanese with using kanji for

preparation helped me to increase my Japanese writing ability,” and all of the respondents agreed

except for one. The student who selected, “Neither,” did not write many opinions in his notebook

in the preparation stage and did not receive a full score for the note-taking task; perhaps he did

not feel that he could improve his writing ability. In order to confirm whether or not participants

could improve their teamwork abilities through their collaborative work, as suggested by Iberri-

Shea (132) and Zare and Othman (1508), statement No. 4 asked whether or not the participants

liked the collaborative group work. Two participants responded, “Neither.” These two students

studied effectively by themselves and may have felt that collaborative tasks sometimes did not

progress promptly and efficiently, and preferred to work at their own pace.
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 13
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Statement No. 5 was, “Considering views opposing to my OWN opinion helped me to

raise my critical thinking ability.” Although no participants disagreed, two responded, “Neither.”

As reported by Liu et al. (54), perhaps only practicing these activities four times during the

semester was not enough to have a significant impact their critical thinking skills. As easy topics

were intentionally selected in consideration of the learners’ oral abilities, No. 6 and No. 7

inquired about students’ preferences regarding the degree of difficulty of the topics. All students

except for one agreed with No. 6, “Topics utilized for the debating activities were easy enough to

discuss in Japanese.” The student who disagreed with statement No. 6 agreed with statement No.

7, “I prefer to talk about more difficult topics in Japanese.” In the comment section, this student

noted that he wanted to talk about politics. Further in the questionnaire, this student strongly

agreed with the statements that he enjoyed the activity (No. 1), was satisfied with the challenges

(No. 2), and improved his writing (No. 3) and critical thinking abilities (No. 5). In terms of topic

selection, this debate activity, which was specifically targeted to students with lower oral

competencies, perhaps did not meet the expectations of this student with high motivation and

high oral competency.

In the comment section, which required students to write their comments about the debate

activity freely, five out of seven students expressed their thoughts about debating using the word,

“fun.” One of them noted, “Very fun, favorite part of class. … It is the most difficult part of the

class, but also the most effective in improving speaking skills.” Another student wrote, “The

debating was fun and worthwhile, even if [it was] hard at times.” Furthermore, three students

including the above two students used the word, “hard.” This indicates that the debating activity

was “hard” but “fun,” and that the majority of the participants were satisfied with the challenge,

with the exception of one participant, who wanted more challenging topics.
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 14
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

5. Discussion

Iberri-Shea noted that debate activities are suitable for Intermediate-high or Advanced

level foreign language learners when introduced at the college level (134). However, this study

shows that it can also be integrated into Intermediate-low or Intermediate-mid level learner

classes if careful consideration is given to the procedures. The outcomes of this study, where

intermediate students were introduced to a debate activity using several strategies, turned out to

be positive for the learners.

The primary justification of this outcome is that most of the learners agreed with the

statement that they enjoyed the activity. Furthermore, the majority of learners used the word,

“fun,” to describe the activity in the comment section of the questionnaire, indicating that their

intrinsic motivation was raised (Kato, “Efficacy” 62; Kato, “A Comparative” 107). When it

comes to teaching and learning foreign languages, reducing negative factors, e.g., anxiety,

disappointment (Aida 164; Kato, “Efficacy” 62; Kato, “A Comparative” 107), and increasing

intrinsic motivation of students are the key issues (Kato, “Efficacy” 62; Kato, “A Comparative”

107; Tremblay and Gardner 516). It was found that the debate activity in this study played a role

in assisting foreign language learning.

Some participants wrote in the comment section that this debate activity is an effective

method to increase speaking opportunities, which was one of the aims of this course. Before

introducing the debate activity into the course, one concern was whether or not the activity

would be too difficult for learners with Intermediate-low and Intermediate–mid level oral

competencies, and if it would increase learners’ anxiety, frustration, and uneasiness. The

strategies carried out in this activity, such as selecting easy topics, choosing topic sides at the
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 15
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

outset, stating opinions without order after having a leader state an opinion, and providing a

relaxed atmosphere, seemed to be effective. Iberri-Shea endorses putting debate activities into

practice (136). Utilizing these strategies, introducing a debate activity in intermediate or even

lower level classes can be successful.

One student stated, “It was difficult to insist on the idea which is not actually my own

idea,” in a reflection session after the debate. Talking about opposing views is a practice to

increase one’s critical thinking, and talking about content separate from language itself is CBI.

Furthermore, after finishing the first debate, participants who realized the value of writing

opinions in Japanese during the preparation stage also tried to write their notes and opinions in

Japanese more after the first debate. As they were required to write Japanese sentences in

Japanese characters, students searched for difficult words using their cell phones not only to find

words, but also to find out how to write them in kanji characters possessing many strokes. This

was excellent practice to increase their vocabulary and help them to learn how to write Japanese

characters. They then needed to use the words in the preparation stage and in the actual debating

session. Similar to the results of Aclan and Aziz, the participants’ reflections in this study

indicated that the activity helped students’ writing abilities (14).

6. Conclusion

A debate activity was introduced as one of the class activities in an intermediate Japanese

oral communication class in a United States southeastern regional university, focused on

increasing opportunities to converse in Japanese. The aim of this paper was to decide whether a

debate activity is appropriate for intermediate level learners. There is a range of research about

integrating debate activities into English conversation classes. However, there is little specific
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 16
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

research about introducing debate activities into intermediate Japanese oral communication

classes, especially in a region where Japanese language is seen as a minor foreign language. This

paper clarifies the procedures and strategies of integrating debate activities into an intermediate

Japanese language class and suggests the possibilities and applicability of such activities on the

basis of qualitative analysis of participants’ reflections. The results from intermediate learners

showed that affirmative opinions were collected from the majority of the participants. These

opinions determined that the debate activity helped to increase utterances in the classroom and

raise learners’ intrinsic motivation, and therefore integration of such activities at the intermediate

level was found to be appropriate. One clear issue with the present study is the limited number of

participants. However, this couldn’t be avoided due to the limited number of Japanese language

learners at the intermediate level in the southeastern region of the United States. In future

replications of this study, classes with more participants should be observed, and quantitative

analyses could be incorporated to see the degree to which students’ oral competency increased.
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 17
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Notes

1. Intrinsic motivation is an energizing of behavior that comes from within an individual.

Kato found that intrinsic motivation is one of the essential factors to “accomplish the difficult

target of learning Japanese” (107).

2. There are three kinds of written symbols in Japanese: hiragana (phonetic scripts),

katakana (phonetic scripts), and kanji characters (ideograms).

3. Questionnaires were conducted after completing all of the tasks for grading purposes,

so students did not have to worry about whether their responses would influence their grades.
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 18
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

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PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 20
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Worthen, Thomas K. and Gaylen N. Pack. “Classroom Debate as an Experiential Activity across

the Curriculum.” Speech Communication Association Convention, vol. 1, no. 14, 1992,

pp. 1-13.

Zare, Pezhman and Moomala Othman. “Classroom Debate as a Systematic Teaching/Learning

Approach.” World Applied Sciences Journal, vol. 28, no. 11, 2013, pp. 1506-1513, DOI:

10.5829/idosi.wasj.2013.28.11.1809.
PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 21
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Appendix 1 Questionnaire on Debate Activity

PAC Postscript Kato: Integrating a Debate Activity 22
into an Intermediate Japanese Class: A Practice Report Through Learner's Reflection

Note: English translation of closing. “Dear all, please speak Japanese in future as well.

Thank you very much!!”