ABSTRACT
The school-based ESL curriculum project, which is the focus of this chapter, was part of a university-school partnership in which we, as university researchers, worked with teachers to develop curriculum units that were responsive to the needs of students. The project was carried out in two broad phases: (a) an analysis of the environment in which English was taught; and (b) the development of curriculum units based on the environment analysis. The rationale for this project stems from concerns that students in rural Malaysia were not motivated to learn English because they did not see the need for the language in their daily lives.
