So I was reading the news and found this:
Cyber Boost For English Lessons
By Jon TampoiBandar Seri Begawan – The Curriculum Development Department at the Ministry of Education, in cooperation with Macmillan Publishers Ltd and CfBT Educational Services, has launched an innovative new resource to strengthen the teaching and learning of English in Brunei Darussalam. The launching ceremony for GatewaytoEnglish.com was held at the ASEAN-EC Management Centre in Gadong.
And so, the sceptic concerning all things to do with websites concerning Brunei's education online (especially English) that I am, I went to the website, to find its faults explore.
I am honestly quite sceptical of how useful this website is. It is basically just the textbook that the Form 1-3 students use for learning English in schools published online. I am sure that if they already have the textbook and exact worksheets already in the hard copy, then why would the students or teachers would want to go to this website, download a unit that looks exactly like the one they already have, and then print that out?
What is it for?
I am disappointed. I let my guard down and for once trusted the hype generated from the Bruneian media. I honestly thought that this website will provide resources that would supplement and complement the Gateway To English textbook that secondary schools are currently using. I guess that I should never trust hype. Although it does provide useful links to other websites for ESL resources, that does not make the website more valuable= these are links that can easilly be found with the most elementary knowledge of Googling.
What a waste. I feel sad. I hope the Ministry of Education didn't spend a lot endorsing on this project. If the Ministry is really serious on incorporating computers and the Internet in language learning, then I suggest major changes to be made in the way projects are approved and implemented. Obviously here, not much research was done. What possible lifechanging benefit can we get from publishing a textbook – that everyone has at least one copy of – online?
Exactly. Nil. Try harder MOE.
iammaurina 
First of all, your link to GatewayToEnglish is incorrect: you forgot to add the”http://” in front.
Secondly, from what I gather after reading the website, GatewayToEnglish.com is not a reproduction of the textbook (they would have little reason to sell the textbook if a downloadable copy is available online) but provides additional material to supplement the contents of the textbook.
And it would also appear that new material will be made availabe from time to time, something a text book cannot do without selling a “revised” edition.
The site is also aimed more at the teacher than the student. Just last week I was having lunch with a teacher friend and mentioned how some schools were getting into the blogging scene and using it in their lessons. His answer brought me back to reality: in Brunei you still cannot assume that all the students have access to the Internet. With this in mind, it would make sense that GatewayToEnglish.com is geared more towards the teaching staff than students.
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I thought so too LSM. I was very excited about it at first since I am an advocate for computer assisted language learning. However, out of curiousity, I actually compared the contents of the website to the textbook (my sister is still in secondary school so I have access to all three Gateway to English books). Then shock and gasp, they’re exactly the same.
Furthermore, although there are material available for the first two books, the third book has nothing.
Yes the site is for teachers rather than the students but only after barely a few years of using this textbook, there are already quite a few major criticisms made about the series of textbooks from the ESL teaching community. How far would the teaching community would actually use this website fruitfully? I, personally, would choose other websites which are not related to any publishing house but are maintained by a community of ESL teachers and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) experts.
I am sure a lot of people remember the disastrous SEBD (Secondary English for Brunei Darussalam) textbook which failed miserably. Now the Gateway to English although is an improvement, truthfully, it still is done in much the same way as the SEBD in reference to its structure which was most in question in the SEBD. Thus, doing a website based on the potentially also disastrous Gateway to English is a scary action.
Perhaps the website will be updated soon. I will keep an eye out for it.
P/s: Whoops! Sorry about the hyperlink! Hehe. It’s fine now.
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I, personally, would choose other websites which are not related to any publishing house but are maintained by a community of ESL teachers and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) experts.—> to avoid bias I meant to add.
You wouldn’t support an environmental scientist who is saying coal is not polluting the air when he is funded by a major coal mining company would you?
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