Every Day is “Global” at ICU.

Global ICU

ELA Course Descriptions

The information on this page is as of 2016.



April entrance students are placed in Streams 1, 2, 3, or 4 based on Placement Test results, as well as their background in English. Students in each stream are divided into "sections" of about 20 students, and teaching is conducted in these sections.

ELA-Course-Descriptions

ARW--Academic Reading & Writing

ARW courses use academic topics students are interested in to increase their reading ability, comprehension, critical thinking and writing skills. Courses are taught mainly by native English-speaking instructors and include individual tutorials as an important part of the course.

RCA--Reading & Content Analysis

Students read academic papers and learn to improve their reading skills and strategies with the overall aim of acquiring higher analytical skills. These are taught by Japanese instructors and include tutorials.

AS--Academic Skills

AS courses teach students various skills necessary for study at the university level, including how to take notes in class, build vocabulary, participate in discussions, and give presentations. AS courses have both required and elective courses.

FRW--Foundations of Research Writing (Stream 4 students)

After completing their first year's curriculum, students take this course to learn the basic of academic thesis writing in preparation of the RW course. This course serves as a bridge between writing papers in the first and second years.

RW--Research Writing

All students finish their work in the ELA by taking the Research Writing course. Students conduct research and write a paper about an academic topic that interests them ("The History of Rock Music," "Mass Media," "English Language Education in Japan," etc.). Students receive detailed advising in the writing process.

Advanced English Studies

Additional classes are offered for students who have completed their ELA courses but who still want more English language study. These courses can be taken for elective credits. These include courses in TOEFL/IELTS preparation and improvement of presentation skills.


Kaho Kanazawa
College of Liberal Arts, enrolled in 2011
Law major

English is an Everyday Language in the ELA

Up until the end of high school, English was taught in Japanese: everything about learning English was explained in Japanese. However, when entering the ELA there came the enormous change of not studying English in Japanese, but studying English through English. Once I started thinking in English, I found that I was no longer converting thoughts in Japanese into English words: I was expressing my thoughts directly in English.

As the name indicates, in the RCA (Reading and Content Analysis) course, we read and analyzed English academic papers. The subjects are very wide ranging, and they extended beyond my own area of specialty. Having to read highly advanced academic papers, the preparation time for each paper could take me up to four hours. However, seriously engaging with some particular topics really sparked my interest, and as a result my perspectives became so much broader.