Challenges and Adaptive Strategies to Teaching English Debate Online

implemented a new 14-week English Debate course for all first year students in the 2020 Fall semester.At the same time, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic resulted in many classes being conducted online, with the newly created English Debate course among them.Online learning environments can present many challenges for students, and among them is cognitive overload.Information overload is an ever-present problem in second language classes, and this can be compounded when these classes are taught online.In an effort to improve student outcomes by reducing cognitive overload, several course and lesson design principles were employed.This paper reflects on the strategies used to reduce cognitive overload among students in an online English Debate course at Rikkyo University with the aim of improving overall student retention.Finally, conclusions are drawn from these strategies that can serve to inform the future creation of course materials for English Debate, as well as using online learning spaces.