常時国際教養傾向と対策 - revised -

 

☆傾向                 身近な話題や時事問題に関連する普遍的テーマ、特に国際的な課題と大学の役割

（2022年度以降の英文以外は、受験者の話を元にしたもので、実際の問題文と全く同じではありません。）

 

出題年                 出題内容                                                        論点の例

2024年　Q. What is your view of a liberal arts education? What areas of learning do you think a liberal arts education should focus on? How do you think this kind of liberal arts education will help you live a meaning ful and fulfilling life in the twenty-first century?

リベラルアーツの存在価値と今世紀に果たすべき役割→informed citizens, cooperation, peace

2023年　Q. Do we need to unlearn old values and learn new ones? State what kind of values we need and explain why those values are important.

歴史的転換期における価値観の見直し                       patriarchy (gender, LGBTQ, race, etc.), neoliberalism, humanism, big government, socialism, multi-polar world

2022年　Q. Is there any problem with just emphasizing the ethos of individualistic merit, hard work, and competition in society?

格差社会と実力主義の問題点　       Meritocracy lacks compassion.

2021年  Q. Is there an issue that you want to solve like that of Grata Thunberg’s speech?

グレタの様に情熱を持って取り組みたい課題 vision, goal, general knowledge, value

2020年　Q. Write an essay in which you define your ideal university course.

大学で作りたい学部                                                    vision, goal, general knowledge, value

2019年  Q. What was the most important choice that you made in the past four years and what is its effect?

過去4年間に行った重大な選択とその影響   value, self-reflection, change, aspiration

2018年　Q. In your opinion, what are the defining characteristics of a liberal arts education, and how does a liberal arts education help prepare individuals for the challenges they will face in the world today?

リベラルアーツと現代社会の課題                 general knowledge, global challenge

2017年　Q. In our age of globalization, what can Japan contribute to the international community? Your answer may discuss Japan’s cultural, political, economic, scientific and/or other contribution.

政府開発援助額17年ぶりに増加                  global corporation

2016年  　Q. According to the data issued by OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), the percentage of Japanese college students studying abroad while in college has been decreasing despite the globalization of college studies. Why do you think Japanese college students are reluctant to study abroad? Would more Japanese college students study abroad?

OECD加盟国先進国中日本の留学率最下位  globalization, development aid

2015年  　Q. There are two views about the roles of universities: one emphasizes that universities should educate their students to be able to find a suitable job, and the other gives priority to the role of expanding their students’ mind to have a wider perspective of things. Discuss these two opinions

大学改革                                                        university education

2014年  　Q. Tokyo was chosen as the city to host the 2020 Summer Olympics, beating Istanbul and Madrid at the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s general session. Did you agree or disagree with IOC’s decision ot choose Tokyo over the two other candidates and shy? If you disagreed, which city would you have chosen for what reasons? Will the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2020 be profitable or detrimental to this country, and what negative and positive consequences do you expect? How would you contribute to, or rather ovoid being involved in, the Olympics?

2020年  　Q. Do you welcome the Olympics coming to Tokyo? How would you like to contribute to it?

東京オリンピック招致                    big sporting events and their effect

 

                                                                  

☆対策   ○志望理由書に書いた目標と関連事項関連の記事を毎日読んでまとめる ○補助問題集および英検1級筆記試験エッセイとTOEFL iBT Writing のトピックを使用して実際に書く練習をする。（知識が足りない場合、英検1級エッセイの模範解答を読んで要約することと準1級エッセイを書くことを並行して行う）

 

 

 

☆Day 1 Homework 

Sub Textbook 2019年  Q. What was the most important choice that you made in the past four years and what is its effect?

・Studying abroad  ・Joining climate justice actions  ・Statting to prepare for going to university

Conclusion: Change from competition to corporation, from hate to love.

☆Day 2 Homework

The world has been experiencing a downturn in many aspects such as politics, economy, or moral. What do you want to do during your college years to contribute to rebuilding the world or Japanese society?

Hints for Points

・Joining Fridays for Future Japan and work to soften the impact of the climate crisis

・Working to rebuild economy by reducing inequality by taxing the superrich and increasing public services

・Running for a local public office, if there is a chance, or support female politicians or candidates

☆Day 3 Homework

Read the following excerpt from the foreword, The Pain of Those Who Remember, written by a former war-correspondent Chris Hedges, from “Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide” by Atef Abu Saif, and answer the following question. The first edition of this book was published in December, 2023.

 

The story of Christmas is the story of a poor woman, nine months pregnant, and her husband forced to leave their home in Nazareth in northern Galilee. The occupying Roman power has demanded they register for the census 90 miles away in Bethlehem. When they arrive, there are no rooms. She gives birth in a stable. King Herod – who learned from the Magi of the birth of the messiah – orders his soldiers to hunt down every child two years old and under in Bethlehem and the vicinity and murder them. An angel warns Joeseph in a dream to flee. The couple and infant escape under the cover of darkness and make the 40-ile journey to Egypt.

  I was in a refugee camp in the early 1980s for Guatemalans who had fled the war into Honduras. The peasant framers and their families, living in filth and mud, their villages and homes burned or abandoned, were decorating their tents with strips of colored paper to celebrate the Massacre of the Innocents.

  ‘Why is this such and important day?’ I asked.

  ‘It was on this day that Christ became a refugee,’ a farmer answered.

  The Christmas story was not written for the oppressors. It was written for the oppressed. We are called to protect the innocents. We are called to defy the occupying power. Atef, Refaat and those like them, who speak to us at the risk of death, echo this Biblical injunction. They speak so we will not be silent. They speak so we will take these words and images and hold them up to the principalities of the world ― the media, politicians, diplomats, universities, the wealthy and privileges, the weapons manufacturers, the Pentagon and the Israel lobby groups ― who are orchestrating the genocide in Gaza. The infant Christ is not lying today in straw, but a pile of broken concrete.

  Evil has not changed down the millennia.

  Neither has goodness.

 

Question: The writer says, “The infant Christ is not lying today in straw, but a pile of broken concrete”. Also, on December 25, 2023, Pope Francis said that children dying in Gaza are the “little Jesuses of today”. What exactly are they talking about?

 

 

For reference:

Both analogies refer to Palestinian refugee children in Gaza being killed in the Israeli genocide, which is the last phase of the 76-year-old ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the ongoing colonization by Israel, which was built and has been led by Zionists. Israel has been periodically and methodically killing Palestinian children as they call it, “lawn-mowing”, to reduce the Palestinian population, ignoring the two-state solution and keeping invasion into the Palestinian territories.

 

Even before the Hamas attack on the Israeli civilians on October 7, IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) had insulted, arrested, attacked, and killed innocent Palestinians, including women, children, elderlies, and the disabled, on a daily basis. They help Israeli citizens usurp houses and land of Palestinians, backed by the Israeli government. They also pour cement into wells and break water facilities in Palestinian territories. After Hamas was elected in Gaza, Israel built walls around Gaza and controlled food and materials that go in and out of this small strip of land, keeping 2.5 million Gazans even poorer than before. Israel had killed hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians daily and in wars. It had even killed peaceful marchers. It shot and killed a couple of thousand and injured thousands of Gazans, including children and a nurse, who marched, in the Martin Luther King Jr. style, towards the wall to show the world the brutality of Israel in 2018 - 2019. IDF targeted legs of the marchers so that they will be crippled for the rest of their lives, which is their routine.

 

Right after October 7, Israel stopped all the necessities from going into Gaza and started indiscriminate attacks, calling the people “human animals”. Since then, Israel has flattened almost all the buildings in Gaza, displacing 100% of Gazans and killed over 40,000 civilians, including 16,000 children, by bombs, bullets, and torture. IDF have bulldozed people alive with garbage, whose arms ziplocked, and burned those in tents alive. They target writers, medics, and doctors. They have destroyed all the universities in Gaza. Their latest powerful weapons tear the victims apart into small pieces, which are collected in plastic bags. After a recent bombing of a school used as a refugee camp that was done during morning prayer, people had to put unidentified pieces of victims together in bags and share them by weight to the families of victims, going 70 kg for an adult and 25-35 kg for a child. IDF also use internationally-prohibited white phosphorus bombs, which melt flesh and bones, producing corpses of children the contents of whose skulls are lost. If those who died of hunger or disease due to lack of nutrition and sanitation caused by the Israeli blockade, over 160,000 Gazans have been killed in this genocide. IDF also arrest innocent Palestinians, including children, in the West Bank more than before. They keep thousands of them in prison in horrendous conditions, torturing and raping them.

 

When they started the attack on Gaza, they ordered the people to evacuate to the southern area in Gaza and attacked them on the way and in the area. There is no place to flee in Gaza now. Like baby Jesus, children in Gaza are homeless, sleeping in camps or on the ground, or on the concrete of ruins, in the never-ending noise of killer drones above their head. They go to sleep fearing their oppressor’s attack at night, when bombing becomes more frequent than the day time, thinking this can be the last night of their short lives. Jesus, or rebels under Roman occupation who collectively became a legend as Jesus Christ, was a Jew, and Jews and Palestinians are of the same race, Semites. Jesus had wooly hair and dark skin, as the Bible describes him. In other words, Jesus could have looked like anyone in Gaza or vice versa. Ironically, now those who claim themselves as his descendants are relentlessly killing people who could be identical to Jesus.

Writing for an Academic Discussion A plan to build a new factory in your community - revised -

Do you see the overall progress of science as a positive or negative force of our world?

 

 

☆Let’s think

1. What is the professor talking about by saying, “The trajectory of scientific advancement has propelled society into new frontiers of understanding and capability”? Give examples.

 

Note: He could be talking about the benefits scientific discoveries and inventions have brought to us.

-        Science has given us new perspectives of the world and ourselves.

e.g. heliocentrism, gravity, radiation, DNA, intestinal flora, etc.

-        It has increased human population and habitat exponentially.

-        It has led to safety, convenience, speed, precision, and variety in many aspects of our lives.

-        It has made what was impossible before possible.

 

2. Give examples of “ethical, social, and environmental implications to consider” related to scientific progress.

Ethical implications: e.g. designer babies

 

Social implications: e.g. increase of solitude

 

Environmental implications: e.g. mass extinction

 

 

☆Hints for points

Ethical implications

-        Weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction like atomic bombs are unconscionable.

-        Anonymity in social media brings out the worst in humanity.

 

Social implications

-        Privacy is lost through the Internet and surveillance states are being established.

-        Robots and AI increase unemployment.

-        Workload has increased because workers are tracked and contacted even during the off time.

-        Technology deteriorates public health, makes the public less intelligent, and dependent on it.

 

Environmental implications

-        Manufacturing facilities have caused pollutions and global warming.

-        Habitat loss and extinction have occurred due to development.

 

 

☆Sample Responses

Sample 1

I believe science is a positive force in general. It protects us from elements and helps us recover from diseases and disasters. It allows us to build strong and comfortable shelters and supply ourselves with food and water. Disaster relief is quickly done with heavy machinery. As a result, modern men live a longer and healthier lives than cave men. Science technology also makes our lives richer. Especially, computers and the Internet help increase our knowledge, expand relationships, and have fun. While negative effects of science technology like climate crisis and nuclear threat are now overwhelming our lives, the root cause of these issues are corporate greed, ignorance, and inertia. Science itself provides us with chances to improve our lives. (121 words)

 

 

Sample 2

While we all enjoy products of scientific advancement, whether we have become happier as a result of scientific progress or not is doubtful. According to Yuval Noah Harari, we lost our freedom due to irrigation technology that allowed for agriculture, which made us give up hunting and gathering, the life of travel and leisure, and confined us to the care of crops year-round. Later, the industrial revolution tied us to factories and offices. Information technology has deprived us of privacy and personal time. The fast pace and large workload resulting from shorter travel time and real-time communication causes drop-out and depression. Ethically alarming comments on social media are the products of highly technological lifestyle in short of face-to-face communication. Not to speak of climate crisis and nuclear threat, the impacts of science technology seem to be driving us to our end. (141 words)

 

Write your draft on this topic. Show it to each other. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s draft.

 

 

DRAFT

 

 

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                          

 

 

Writing for an Academic Discussion A plan to build a new factory in your community - revised -

If a company announced plans to build a large factory in your community, would you support this addition?

 

 

☆Let’s Think

1         What are the advantages and disadvantages of building a factory in general?

2         Are there any conditions of your community to welcome or reject a new factory?

 

 

☆Hints for Points

◍ Advantages and disadvantages of building a factory in general

Advantages

1         Jobs will be created.

2         It will stimulate the local economy.

3         The municipal government will benefit from the tax revenue increase.

Disadvantages

1         Air/water/noise pollution

2         Transportation will be crowded.

3         There might be conflicts between old and new residents.

 

◍ Conditions of your community

1         old residential area → The health of children and senior citizens might be adversely affected.

2         already full of factories  → more disadvantages than advantages

 

 

☆An Essay for Ideas and Expressions

I would welcome the factory if it were run by a new type of company that contributes to sustainability but strongly reject it if it were owned by the conventional corporation. Although it would seemingly benefit my town mainly because of job creation, a factory owned by a typical corporation would eventually bring unhappiness to the community.

 

In the long run, a corporate-owned factory would harm my community and the environment. As we have seen, factories have polluted the air, water, and soil, causing diseases and premature deaths among the residents. By law, however, a corporation is only responsible to its shareholders, neither to the community nor to the environment. If a calculation shows that it can still make profits even if it has to pay compensation for the damage caused by the production or the products, the corporation just makes the product. Discrimination is also related to pollution. In the US, white communities are compensated for a pollution, while the residents are ignored if they are minorities.

 

Outsourcing is another practice to worry about. If the factory is successful, the company will try to expand and close the factory to build some in overseas countries where cheap labor forces are available. If this happens, my town will suffer because of the rise of the unemployment while the people in countries the factories will move to will be exploited. This has happened in America over the last 30 years. The result is a lot of ghost towns and the crushed middle class. The Japanese government has followed this neoliberal economic policy imported from America over the past 30 years, and therefore it can be concluded that the same will happen in my town.

 

Moreover, the corporation could close even a most productive factory for profits. For example, if the product the factory turns out is abundant in the market, the company often stops manufacturing it to prevent its price from falling down, just as extra crops such as oranges are discarded to manipulate the market prices, when many people are starving, as depicted in “The Grapes of Wrath” half a century ago. It is a common practice of modern businesses.

 

A new type of company that I would be pleased to invite to my town is the one of employee ownership. I myself have no desire to own a company, but, in theory, I think this system will make our lives better. Employee ownership allows all employees to literally participate in policymaking. This would drive the factory to the right direction. For instance, considering most citizens are concerned about environmental issues while many large companies are still refusing to take measures against climate crisis for profits, a company where decisions are made by workers’ majority vote is likely to emit minimum amount of CO2 and to be friendly to the environment in general. Needless to say, the pay gap between the officials and the rank-and-files would be smaller because everyone is the owner of the company. This kind of company is established by people who have values far from money-and-power orientation, and therefore, my town would be livelier with people respecting and supporting each other so that everyone can have a good life.

 

A company as a tool for extra-income of a few super-rich people is not welcome, while a company of the ordinary people, by the ordinary people, for the ordinary people is a great welcome. Increase of factories operated by this type of companies would drastically change society.

Write your draft on this topic. Show it to each other. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s draft.

 

 

                                                 DRAFT