THE ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS COURSE
The course under discussion is being offered as a core course in the summer Intensive English Program (IEP) at the International University of Japan in Niigata (IUJ). In order to discuss the application of the task-based approach to its design, we need to look at three important aspects first: the institutional contexts of IUJ, the goals of the intensive English program within those contexts, and the goals of the Communication Skills course itself.
IUJ, established as a private Japanese university in 1983, is an English-medium graduate-level academic institution offering master's degree programs in international relations, development, and management. Its educational goal, or the founding principle, is to foster a spirit of internationalism. Its curriculum aims at providing the students, mostly young men and women from a variety of backgrounds and countries, with "interdisciplinary and professional knowledge which they can put to practical use in the international arena" (IUJ's Catalogue for 1996-97, p.5). In general, because the medium of instruction is English, and the classroom instruction is modeled in general after the Western/US educational norms, the curriculum tends to highlight the importance of interaction and participation. The pedagogical approaches in the classes in general cover a variety of styles, ranging from the traditional lectures to highly interactive and participatory activities.
Furthermore, the environment is truly international in that both the faculty and the students come from various countries (about forty). It has a residential campus in a rural setting. These institutional features produce a highly cross-cultural and international living environment on the campus. These characteristics form the institutional contexts within which the goals of the intensive English program are determined.
In these contexts, IEP is offered as a preparatory program. In other words, it is offered prior to the beginning of the regular programs of study with the overall goal of preparing the students linguistically and psychologically for their regular programs. Furthermore, it is a language program designed in terms of content-based language instruction (Brinton et al. 1989), i.e., most of the reading materials are taken from their content courses and the classroom activities approximate those in the regular classes.
Thus, IEP serves as an important orientation for the students in preparation for their two-year studies and way of life at IUJ. It is this sense of orientation that is reflected in the program goals. Accordingly, the primary goals are to develop English language skills for specific academic needs in graduate studies at IUJ; communication skills for effective classroom participation; and cross-cultural awareness inside and outside the class. Its additional goals are to provide opportunities for developing leadership, organizational, and interpersonal communication skills as members of the IUJ community; using IUJ's advanced computer and internet facilities for language learning and international communication purposes; and self-learning.
These goals are translated into core and support courses in the IEP curriculum, accompanied by some extra-curricular activities. The core courses consist of the text skills courses that focus on the reading and the writing needs of the students. The oral communication skills (CS) course is the second core course that focuses on listening and speaking skills relevant to academic needs. It also covers the goals of cross-cultural awareness, as well as, leadership, organizational and interpersonal communication skills. The discussion in this paper is limited to those goals of the CS course that deal with speaking and interactional skills in general. Another part of the course is to develop academic listening skills, but this is beyond the scope of this paper.
Accordingly, the goals of the CS course are to:
-develop skills for oral presentations, group discussions and debates;
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