NUS has played an active part in the nationwide Speak Good English Movement since its creation of a Promotion of Standard English (PROSE) committee in November 1999. Consisting of representative members from the various NUS faculties, Office of Student Affairs, Centre for English Language Communication, and CDTL, PROSE works in coordination with the Ministry of Education’s steering committee, ENTHUSE (Encouraging the Use of Standard English). The goals of PROSE are:

• to develop and implement an action plan to promote strategies that would emphasise the use of internationally intelligible and acceptable English for academic discourse and for the workplace; and
  
• to create an informed awareness among the members of the NUS community regarding the importance of this variety of internationally acceptable English for effective teaching and learning, and for the success of our students in their studies now and in their professional lives.

Students listening avidly to a PROSE
workshop presentation (August 2000)

After nine months of laborious planning, PROSE Week, consisting of a series of events promoting the use of Standard English, was held during 14–19 August 2000. CDTL’s involvement in PROSE included designing the PROSE logo, creating the PROSE webpage, organising and hosting PROSE workshops, as well as assisting in the production of the PROSE jingle. Judging from the overwhelming response from students and the number of enquiries from staff about PROSE workshops, CDTL is glad to have played a part in the promotion of Standard English in NUS.