senior teacher of English languages
Kazakhstan, Almaty
The objectives of the paper are to highlight the importance of project
work in teaching English, to describe its main peculiarities and types, to
discover how it influences the students during the educational process and if
it helps to learn the language.
The problem of using project work in teaching English is of great
importance. Project work is characterized as one of the most effective methods
of teaching and learning a foreign language through research and communication,
different types of this method allow us to use it in all the spheres of the
educational process. It involves multiskilling activities which focus on a
theme of interest rather than of specific language tasks and helps the students
to develop their imagination and creativity. Nevertheless, teachers are not
keen on the idea of providing project work into their lessons because of the
disadvantages this method has. The main idea of project work is considered to
be based on teaching students through research activities and stimulating their
personal interest.
A project is an extended piece
of work on a particular topic where the content and the presentation are
determined principally by the learners. The teacher or the textbook provides
the topic, but the project writers themselves decide what they write and how
they present it. This learner-centered characteristic of project work is vital,
as we shall see when we turn now to consider the merits of project work. It is
not always easy to introduce a new methodology, so we need to be sure that the
effort is worthwhile. Students do not feel that English is a chore, but it is a
means of communication and enjoyment. They can experiment with the language as
something real, not as something that only appears in books. Project work
captures better than any other activity the three principal elements of a
communicative approach.
These are:
a) a concern for motivation, that is, how the learners relate to the
task.
b) a concern for relevance, that is, how the learners relate to the
language.
c) a concern for educational values, that is, how the language
curriculum relates to the general educational development of the learner.
[1,40]
A project is an extended task which usually integrates language skills
through a number of activities. These activities combine in working towards an
agreed goal and may include planning, gathering of information through reading,
listening, interviewing, discussion of the information, problem solving, oral
or written reporting, display, etc.
Learners' use of language as they negotiate plans, analyse, and discuss
information and ideas is determined by genuine communicative needs. At the school
level, project work encourages imagination and creativity, self-discipline and
responsibility, collaboration, research and study skills, and cross-curricular
work through exploitation of knowledge gained in other subjects. Successful use
of project work will clearly be affected by such factors as availability of
time, access to authentic materials, receptiveness of learners, the
possibilities for learner training, and the administrative flexibility of
institutional timetabling. [2,38]
Project work leads to purposeful language use because it requires
personal involvement on the part of the students from the onset of a project,
students, in consultation with their instructor, must decide what they will do
and how they will do it, and this includes not only the content of the project,
but also the language requirements. So from this point project work emerges as
a practical methodology that puts into practice the fundamental principles of a
communicative approach to language teaching. It can thus bring considerable
benefits to our language classroom, like:
Increased motivation - learners become personally involved in the
project.
All four skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking, are
integrated.
Autonomous learning is promoted as learners become more responsible for
their own learning.
There are learning outcomes -learners have an end product.
Authentic tasks and therefore the language input are more authentic.
Interpersonal relations are developed through working as a group.
Content and methodology can be decided between the learners and the
teacher and within the group themselves so it is more learner centered.
Learners often get help from parents for project work thus involving the
parent more in the child's learning. If the project is also displayed parents
can see it at open days or when they pick the child up from the school.
A break from routine and the chance to do something different.
A context is established which balances the need for fluency and
accuracy.[2,40]
It would be wrong to pretend that project work does not have its
problems. Teachers are often afraid that the project classroom will be noisier
than the traditional classroom and that this will disturb other classes in the
school, but it does not have to be noisy. Students should be spending a lot of
the time working quietly on their projects: reading, drawing, writing, and
cutting and pasting. In these tasks, students will often need to discuss things
and they may be moving around to get a pair of scissors or to consult a
reference book, but this is not an excuse to make a lot of noise. If students
are doing a survey in their class, for example, there will be a lot of moving
around and talking. However, this kind of noise is a natural part of any
productive activity. Indeed, it is useful to realize that the traditional
classroom has quite a lot of noise in it, too. There is usually at least one
person talking and there may be a tape recorder playing, possibly with the
whole class doing a drill. There is no reason why cutting out a picture and
sticking it in a project book should be any noisier than 30 or 40 students
repeating a choral drill. The noise of the well-managed project classroom is
the sound of creativity.
Project work is a different way of working and one that requires a
different form of control. Students must take on some of the responsibility for
managing their learning environment. Part of this responsibility is learning
what kind of, and what level of noise is acceptable. When we introduce project
work we also need to encourage and guide the learners towards working quietly
and sensibly. [1,112]
This kind of work is time-consuming of course, it takes much longer to
prepare, make, and present a project than it does to do more traditional
activities. When we are already struggling to get through the syllabus or
finish the textbook, we will probably feel that we do not have time to devote
to project work, however good an activity it may be. There are two responses to
this situation:
1. Not all project work needs to be done in class time. Obviously, if
the project is a group task, most of it must be done in class, but a lot of
projects are individual tasks. Projects about My Family, My House, etc. can be
done at home.
2. When choosing to do project work we are making a choice in favors of
the quality of the learning experience over the quantity. It is unfortunate
that language teaching has tended to put most emphasis on quantity. And yet
there is little evidence that quantity is really the crucial factor. What
really matters in learning is the quality of the learning experience.
3. Project work provides rich learning experiences: rich in color,
movement, interaction and, most of all, involvement. The positive motivation
that projects generate affects the students’ attitude to all the other aspects
of the language programme. Learning grammar and vocabulary will appear more
relevant because the students know they will need these things for their
project work. [1,120]
The students will spend all their time speaking their mother tongue.
This is true to a large extent. It is unlikely that most students will speak
English while they are working on their project. However, rather than seeing
this as a problem, we should consider its merits:
a) it is a natural way of working. It is a mistake to think of L1 (the
mother tongue) and L2 (the language being learnt) as two completely separate
domains. Learners in fact operate in both domains, constantly switching from
one to the other, so it is perfectly natural for them to use L1 while working
on a L2 product. As long as the final product is in English it does not matter
if the work is done in L1.
b) project work can provide some good opportunities for realistic
translation work. A lot of the source material for projects (leaflets, maps,
interviews, texts from reference books, etc.) will be in the mother tongue.
Using this material in a project provides useful translation activities.
c) there will be plenty of opportunities in other parts of the language
course for learners to practice oral skills. Project work should be seen as a
chance to practice that most difficult of skills, writing.
Some teachers are concerned that without the teacher’s firm control the
weaker students will be lost and will not be able to cope. But not all students
want or need the teacher’s constant supervision. By encouraging the more able
students to work independently we are free to devote our time to those students
who need it most. One group may have ‘finished’ the project after a couple of
hours and say they have nothing to do than remind them that it is their
responsibility to fill the time allocated to project work and discuss ways they
could extend the work they have already completed. [3,237] Examles;
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Purpose. The portfolio supports the learning process of the
students and the portfolio allows the teachers to evaluate ALL the work the
students have done throughout the term, not only the final product of the work.
Process. Every
time the students produce a document in the course they collect it in the
portfolio. At the end of the term the portfolio contains:
2.
description of the main idea of the short film
4.
short film scripts (drafts and final versions)
5.
PowerPoint presentations
(corrected project progress and self-reflectionspresentations)
6.
references
The portfolio is evaluated on
the process, like whether the work was done according to instructions,
completeness, timeliness and teamwork. It is NOT evaluated on the quality of
the language.
Project work provides an opportunity to develop creativity, imagination,
enquiry, and self-expression, and the assessment of the project should allow
for this. Project work must rank as one of the most exciting teaching
methodologies a teacher can use. It truly combines in practical form both the
fundamental principles of a communicative approach to language teaching and the
values of good education.
LIST OF REFERENCES
1. Phillips D., Burwood S., Dunford H. Projects with Young Learners.
Resource Books for Teachers – Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. – 153p.
2. Haines S. Projects for the EFL Classroom: Resource materials for
teachers. – Walton-on-Thames: Nelson, 1991. – 108p.
3. Finegan E. Language: Its Structure and Use (3rd edition). – Oxford:
Heinemmann, 1999. – 158 p.
4.StudentPortfolios. 2004.Nov2011.<http://www.adprima.com/student_portfolios.htm>