With the spread in popularity of the Primary Years Programme (PYP), the Middle Years programme (MYP) and the International Baccalaureate (IB) in education systems world – wide, teachers are having to translate the curriculum goals into meaningful syllabus plans. This paper will summarise the challenges that teachers are feeling in effectively supporting the English language and literacy work that needs to be done in delivering this new curriculum. It will draw on a recent consultancy carried out by the HKIEd into the needs of international school teachers in Hong Kong.

This chapter explores the positive contribution that ideas and constructs from both the business and management training and the adult education literature can make to the theory and practice of workplace ELT curriculum design. Specifically, the chapter looks at how workplace stakeholders can provide a business voice to the ELT curriculum processes, how business-training planning and evaluation frameworks can assist ESP workplace practitioners in reconceptualizing the curriculum process, and how a review of adult learning research can help ESP workplace practitioners better understand the English language needs of professionals in the workplace. Unfortunately, the applied linguistic literature is, for the most part, school-based, leaving workplace ELT programs poorly researched and documented in terms of curriculum theory and practice. The chapter will report on studies of workplace English carried out in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The first Hong Kong study (Lockwood, 2002) investigated the way in which frameworks from business management and training can be used in ESP workplace training to ensure workplace stakeholders and thus the organization as a whole are better represented in the process. The second Hong Kong study (Hamp-Lyons et al., 2002) provides insights into how different stages in a professional career (in this case accountants) impact the kind of written language expectations of that professional. Two studies conducted in the Philippines in the business processing outsourcing (BPO) industry, specifically within call centers in Manila, illuminates further the language demands of the increasingly globalized workplace.
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Substantial funding is currently provided to HK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) who are required to provide more and better language proficiency outcomes reports to a range of funding stakeholders. They also recruit unprecedented numbers of non-local students in an effort to develop Hong Kong as an 'education hub' in Asia. Added to these external contextual factors, the Centre for Language in Education at the Hong Kong Institute of Education has recently embarked on a curriculum renewal process for its undergraduate English language programmes that entail providing tailored proficiency pathways for the students. These major contextual changes have resulted in a need for the CLE to have an institutional 'end-to-end' English language assessment solution to provide: (1) Language screening and placement; (2) Language formative and summative assessment processes and tasks for the new curriculum; and (3) Language reporting at year end. Such an 'end-to-end' solution will provide a systematic approach to screening and placement assessment, formative and summative assessment and language assessment reporting for all English enhancement programmes. Hitherto, CLE (and other HEI language centres) has relied on ad hoc language assessment solutions to these institutional requirements and/or an over reliance on international certification that is expensive and limited as an end-to-end solution. The Tertiary English Language Test (TELT) being developed at HKIEd, has received seeding funding from the Institute, to develop assessment processes fort he range of purposes outlined above. This paper reports on the work achieved so far with particular reference to the screening and placement test. It will outline the TELT test specifications, stages of piloting, process of item analysis using Rasch Measurement Analysis, scales and descriptors for speaking and writing and calibration issues in speaking and writing. The paper will also report on senior managements' response to the new tool