An experimental one-year course in English for freshman nonmajors at a Japanese university is described and discussed. Classes, comprised of over 50 students, met once a week for 90-minute lessons. The syllabus focused on the thorough learning of short, humorous stories and activities developed from the stories. In class, English was used as much as possible in writing and speaking. Teaching large classes of non-English majors was possible, but the initial goal of enabling the students to tell the stories freely in English was not achieved. The greatest difficulty was found to be getting the students to relate the text's ordinary English to ordinary Japanese, perhaps due to word to word rephrasings used in previous language training. Suggested improvements include additional language-intensive activities, less reliance on the text and more reliance on student notebooks, and more study of practical language-use situations. (MSE)