This study explores ways to enhance pre-service English teachers’ curriculum development competency through collaboration with in-service teachers. To this end, a course was designed to incorporate three key competencies of curriculum development (curriculum literacy, curriculum development competency, and curriculum evaluation competency) while adopting task-based language teaching and collaboration with inservice teachers as teaching methods. The designed course was implemented in a university for validation and revision. Ten pre-service English teachers participated in the course, where they developed English curricula in response to requests from three in-service middle school English teachers. A questionnaire survey conducted at the end of the semester with both pre-service and in-service teachers revealed that the proposed course model adequately worked to improve the three key competencies of English curriculum development among pre-service teachers. Further, collaboration with inservice teachers was found to enhance pre-service teachers’ responsibility and active engagement in curriculum development, while also providing practical assistance and creative teaching ideas to in-service teachers.

This study explored if and to what extent foreign language high school students would benefit from participating in a school English drama contest in terms of English proficiency, affective attitudes, and collaborative competence. For this purpose, questionnaires were constructed to measure students’ perception of their growth in those areas after participating in the contest. Pre- and post-questionnaires were administered to 85 students, and in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 of the survey respondents. In a comparison of the pre- and post-test measures, the study found that the drama contest contributed to reducing students’ anxiety and enhancing their intrinsic motivation. Although pre- and post-test differences in language proficiency and collaborative competence were found to be non-significant, the participants addressed positive aspects of their experience in the contest. For example, they reported that they improved their pronunciation, speaking, and writing skills and that they collaborated and learned from one another by sharing ideas, providing feedback, and exchanging opinions.