Developing Online Materials for English Language Teaching : Report of Projects in the 2003 Fiscal Year

This paper describes the backgrounds and processes of two projects for developing English language teaching materials. MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) has been promoting the "Project of Utilizing IT in Higher Education," and Hiroshima University has been engaged in the project in such areas as management of Web infrastructure, simultaneous Web transmission of video and sound for distance learning, and developing Web materials for teaching. As for English language teaching, the two projects started as parts of the project mentioned above in the 2003 fiscal year by the author. One aspect involves developing online video and audio materials which introduce historical culture and daily customs in the U.K. These materials are designed especially for students who are planning to study in Britain. The other project entails creating online writing materials which focus on word orders in phrases and phrase order in sentences. The goal of this project is to help learners become more aware of the differences between the Japanese and English languages, particularly from the aspect of premodification in Japanese and postmodification in English. The status of development, remaining issues, and further plans are described