As all students are now entitled to six years of secondary education under the New Academic structure, catering for learner diversity has become an issue of concern for most teachers.  In order to ensure that students remain motivated and see the relevance of what they are asked to do to their lives and future career prospects, it is important to design school-based curricula that also reflect the interests and needs of students. 

The elective component of the senior secondary curriculum serves the twin purposes of both broadening the scope and range of text types students are exposed to read, whilst also giving teachers a tool to meet the diverse needs and interests of their students.  With this in mind, senior form English teachers at Yuen Long Catholic Secondary School selected elective modules that they thought would appeal to their students because of their more practical and work-related content.  The teachers believe that if the students could make meaningful links between the classroom learning experience and the world outside, it would be easier to motivate the students to learn English.

While designing the school-based curriculum for the elective module “Learning English through Workplace Communication”, they infused career education elements into the curriculum to make the module more meaningful for students.  The workplace simulation project provided students with opportunities to develop their employability skills and personal attributes through setting up their own companies and selling their own products.