Developing a curriculum for the introduction of English study skills in early tertiary education

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This research project aimed to foster basic study skills in English for foundation level university education (especially among first year university students) by formulating a curriculum and syllabus and developing a variety of educational materials which consciously and constructively apply multimedia and accumulated know-how to the task of managing such classes. As one form of innovative university English education, the materials were developed based around fundamental research on pedagogy and learning in order to promote the acquisition of English study skills at the beginning university level.Some of the distinctive features of this research include, (1) an applied focus on the introductory university level, (2) the application of previous research into early university education, where students have already been taught English to some degree, but where individual differences in academic ability and a diversity of learner needs exist, and English language education must be able to cross into various specialist fields, (3) a research team with a background in not only language education but also specialist fields such as psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics and sociolinguistics working in conjunction with experts in educational technology, meaning that they were able to develop teaching materials that address more than simply English education.Specifically, ten themes were set based around core Language Skills, and the curriculum was organized from the viewpoint of IT-Related Skills, Sound Focus, Grammar/Vocabulary Focus and an individual Project. Based on that curriculum, a pilot edition of a set of educational materials was developed, entitled "First Steps in Academic English Skills- an introduction to academic skills in English" .