Teaching development grants final and financial report: Chinese language learning database for Common Recruitment Examination (CRE) - Language training for workplace requirements

The Strategic Plan 2009-2012 and Beyond stated the Institute aims at preparing our students to become competent professionals. The curriculum is designed to develop graduates with competence and professional excellence. To align with the Institute's strategic direction, CLE is committed to provide quality language programmes that meet the needs of our students' professional workplace context. In view of the vast demand of final year students, in 2008-09 & 2009-10 academic years, SAO invited CLE to jointly offer workshops and mock examinations of Common Recruitment Examination (CRE) of Civil Service Bureau for these students. With the Institute's offering of diversified range of undergraduate programmes, it is anticipated that more and more of our graduates will be interested in Civil Service appointments. CLE and SAO see the need of preparing our students to take the CRE, not just for facilitating students to take the examination, but developing our graduates' language competency to meet their future professional workplace requirement. Since most of our 4-year full-time students complete their 90-hour compulsory Chinese enhancement programme in Year 2, they don't have much chance to further develop their Chinese language skills afterwards to meet the needs of work after graduation. The CRE will provide an incentive for students to upkeep their Chinese language skills as well as a framework to identify language skills which the general public sees as necessary for university graduates. As not enough resources will be available to provide face-to-face classroom teaching in this area, self-access learning packages and assessments tools will be developed to enhance students' language skills as well as learners' autonomy. SAO with its good network with the students will help promote the resources to students and provide information on their needs and feedback. Aligning with the Strategic Plan, we will help students to enhance language competency through the application of information and communication technology. This project will provide a well-organized self-access language database to enhance students' Chinese language proficiency. Follow-up workshops may be offered if there is such need. The resource materials will also be useful for SAO in organizing related training programmes to increase our graduates' employability.