The University of Malaya Spoken English Project (UMSEP), a cooperative effort undertaken by the University of Malaya and the British Council, is described. The purpose of the project is to design and develop oral English courses for final-year university students and recent graduates needing English skills for careers in business, public administration, and law. The discussion is in four parts. The first part provides background information, describing the preliminary research into such areas as learner characteristics, target skills, and collection and analysis of data. The second part discusses the principles underlying the design of the three courses developed: preparatory oral skills for management (POSM), oral skills for management, and oral skills for law. The third part focuses on the first of the three courses (POSM), illustrating how those principles were incorporated into its design and detailing the structure of materials whose units are designed to fit into the 3-part approach to language instruction. This consists of three activities: Deep End, in which students are thrown back on their own language resources to complete a task; Support, which builds upon and extends the student's resources; and Performance, in which students use what they have learned in the whole Unit to perform new tasks. The fourth part of the paper discusses the implications for methodology, the roles of both student and teacher, and the consequences for student evaluation. Examples of materials and exercises are appended. (MSE)