Case Study: The KU International Book Club: R/Lead Project
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Kyoto University

 Kyoto University has launched a university-founded project called the Read;Lead (R/Lead) International project, which is a discussion study-group developed under the KU Book Club in order to foster interaction and discussion between International and Japanese students based upon the books which they have selected to read as a group. 

The R/Lead International Project is a student-initiated project with three main students’ coordinators of the R/Lead Secretariat, Michael R. Smith, Maki Nakata and Shuzo Tani along with eighteen facilitators who have received professional training by British Council.  The facilitators kept very active in preparing the discussions during the summer break.

Our secretariat received overwhelming number of applications for the project. As a result, one-hundred students were admitted to enroll the R/Lead project as a participant. These participants and facilitators will have a weekly meeting for a small group discussion in the fall semester. Some of the discussion groups will also work closely with our international discussion partners from National Taiwan University on Skype.

As a part of this project, Kyoto University students took Aptis test to measure their English proficiency for three key areas: grammar, vocabulary and speaking. Ninety-eight students registered for the  Aptis speaking test online which took place in October 10th and 11th of 2013 at Yoshida main campus. The participants of this project will retake the  Aptis test at the end of this project to measure their progress over the course of the R/Lead discussion project. 

R/Lead logo designed by Shinichi Kasuno/ Kyoto University