Foreign Affairs Class based on Model United Nations, 2002

Here we introduce our Foreign Affairs Class for the third-year students in the International Course during the school year 2002. This year Daniel Wilcock and I taught for the first term, while Erica Crump and I for the second and the third term. We employed Speaking Globally English in an International Context (Prentice Hall Regents) as our textbook.
This school year we organized our classes mainly around country reports and debating based on the Model United Nations Conference. 28 students took part in the class, which became 29 in September when an exchange student returned from Denmark. We divided the students into 9 groups of 3 or 4 students. Each of the groups represented one of the following countries: Brazil, France, India, Kenya, Korea, Malayasia, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, USA.

We teachers chose the countries, based on the geographic diversity of geographic regions, economies, political perspectives, cultures, and religions. Each group was a representative body in the General Assembly of the Model United Nations. The Foreign Affairs Class met during two consecutive periods one day a week. At the beginning of each class, two countries deliver a country report.

During the country report, each of the country group members presents one of the following : spoken presentation, display, and handout.

We had two rounds of country reports. In the first round we asked the students to focus on the geographic information in the first round, and to cover the following five points in their first Country Report: 1) Brief History, 2) Ethnicity / Language,
3) Religion, 4) Weather, 5) Fisheries / Agriculture / Industries.
In the second round, each representative body presented their culture as actively as possible.

After country reports the class rest of the first period was spent discussing and writing about international topics. This was based on the textbook Speaking Globally (SG, hereinafter).

SG has 10 units:Unit 1: International EnglishUnit 2: International TravelUnit 3: International Business and TradeUnit 4: The EnvironmentUnit 5: EthnocentrismUnit 6: World ReligionsUnit 7: World OrganizationsUnit 8: International LawUnit 9: International EducationUnit 10: The Future

We started with the text’s “Warming Up” exercises to have the students acquire some information and related vocabularies in an active style. First the students read the “Background Reading” in SG, and then we teachers introduced related vocabularies and provided some activities or quizzes.
About ten minutes before the end of the first period, we introduced the topic for the debate.

Daniel preferred questions like “Should immigration be made easier?” to which the students can reply either Yes/No or Pro/Con, and we employed the style to the end of this school year.

In the final minutes of the first period, the representative bodies start preparing for the Debate Part I.

Then the students take their ten minute break.Even during the ten minutes break, some students kept preparing or talking about the related issues.

After the break, the representative bodies spend the first ten minutes of the second period preparing for the debate. After this, the debate part I gets started, and the ambassador to the United Nations from each country (one student from each group) delivers their opinion one by one. We demand that the students listen to the other opinions, as much as they concentrate delivering their own.

Some students focus only on their speech with paying little attention to the others. That is strongly against our implicit purpose in foreign affairs class. We need dialogues in this world, not plural monologues. We, however, tell the students about the strategic importance of paying careful attention to the different opinions. They should try to pick up some demands or ideas in the other statements, so as to make their own in the Debate Part II more appealing to the other representative bodies. This will help them form a majority around their standpoint in the final voting.

Next comes an intermission, during which the representative bodies prepare for the next speech. After the internmission, we start part II of the debate.

At the end of the second round of debating speeches, we have the final voting for Yes/No or Pro/Con (including Undecided). It seems a topic which leads to the divided or split voting result will make the debate more interesting.
SG only contained enough themes and topics for the first half of the school year.

For the second half of the school year, Erica and I chose to have students think of topics by themselves. The students also changed their countries to broaden their understanding. This time we let the students decide their countries, though we did not forget to remember them that the balance among regions and cultures was very important. First each student named favorite countries, and we listed them all. They voted and chose 9 new countries. Luckily enough, the choice had diversity, thanks to the students’s sense of proportion. The countries were: Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, and South Africa.
We started our second half by making up themes. Each student picked two or three themes. They talked about the themes, and reduced the number into nine. One theme was given to each of the new representative bodies by lot, and each country started thinking of a topic for their theme. The themes and topics were:1) FoodShould food waste be taxed?2) MarriageShould gay marriage be allowed in each country?3) AnimalShould each government ban animal tests even for medical experiments?4) MusicShould each country stop illegal music copying?5) SportsShould the UN donate the place where everyone can play sports?6) DrugsShould UN recommend each country to make common regulations of drugs?7) TradeShould we extend globalism in world trade?8) EnvironmentShould each country spend the money to think about global warming?9) TerrorismShould the international court decide who are the terrorists?
We organized classes almost the same way as the first half. However, since we lacked a textbook, we had a little bit hard time preparing introductory materials to provide the students some background knowledge and related vocabularies. We also tried to do the introduction actively.
I would like to introduce some voices of the participants:
One student who had not been interested in the world news says:

“One day, when I was reading a newspaper, I noticed that I could understand the problems, and felt very close to the countries than ever.”

I thought that was the foreign affairs class’s effect, explaining the start of her interest in the international topics.

Another student writes about the change of her view on developing countries:

“Before taking Foreign Affairs classes, I thought that the developing countries are only poor, lacking food, having a lot of refugees and so on. But after taking Foreign Affairs classes, I knew the developing countries have high culture, traditional religion, traditional clothes and so on. These things are very interesting for me. Each country has different characteristics. It is very wonderful. That is the world. Sadly enough, we don’t understand it. There are fictional images of foreign countries in our minds. We see others through the lens. I found the misunderstanding, and discovered new aspects of the countries in this class. I could remove the lens.”

These words remind me of my happiness and luckiness to teach this unique class: foreign affairs.