Introduction to CELC

CELC’s mission is to empower its students to acquire effective English language and communication skills for their academic and professional lives through innovative teaching, promotion of independent learning and engagement in ELT-related research.

The four aspects that we focus on are:

• Developing Students' English Language Skills
• Enhancing Students' Communication Skills
• Providing Training in English for Academic Purposes (EAP)
• Researching Issues Related to Language Teaching and Learning

 

Developing Students' English Language Skills

Some students in the University demonstrate ability in their core subjects but meet many challenges in generating and organising information when they write or speak. Some of them also meet challenges in the mastery of lexico-grammatical features. CELC helps these students develop their English language skills to enable them to complete their course work successfully.

To this end, CELC has designed courses to increase its students' ability to speak and write in ways valued by the academic community.

Enhancing Students' Communication Skills

Business, government and industry in Singapore choose to employ tertiary graduates who possess strong communication skills. Thus, CELC has developed communication courses which prepare its students to meet the demands of their prospective employers. These courses include critical thinking and communication skills for engineering students; business communication skills for business students and communication, job search and meeting skills for science and computer science students.

Providing Training in English for Academic Purposes (EAP)

Another important role of CELC is to provide special language programmes for academic purposes. Over the last two decades, CELC has offered English for academic purposes to an increasing number of graduate students from countries such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, Myanmar, India, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Vietnam. The graduate courses cater to these students' diverse proficiency levels and enable them to conduct research, write academic papers in English and communicate research findings effectively.

CELC has also been commissioned by the Ministry of Education to run intensive English language courses for pre-matriculated students from the People's Republic of China. The courses aim to equip students with the English communication skills required for their academic work.

Researching Issues Related to Language Teaching and Learning

As CELC has access to a large number of students with a wide range of language abilities, its teaching staff are placed in a unique position to investigate language teaching and learning issues at the tertiary level. The research findings are disseminated through the Reflections on English Language Teaching (RELT), an international-refereed academic journal; English Language Teaching World Online (ELTWO), a web-based journal; as well as through regional and international journals.

As part of its staff development programme, CELC runs regular in-house seminars to enable colleagues to share their research findings, experiences and ideas on how to improve language teaching and learning. CELC also provides a platform for academic discussion on English Language teaching through its triennial international symposia. They were held in 2004, 2007 and 2010 respectively. The fourth international symposium will be held in 2013.