1.1. • Encounter projects – students meet and interview tourists – Students go to invite foreigners to classroom to talk – Students visit and collect information from some English-speaking environments • Text projects: may not be face-to face encounter – Sample texts and analyze them • Class correspondence – Bulletins or wall papers • Information survey and research • Production – Writing or speaking • Performance and organization: – Organize an event on a topic: an environment protection campaign launch, for example
2. II. Project-based learning (PBL) and principles
2.1. Principles: Learner-centredness which emphasizes students’ voice and choice in doing the project. PBL should be based on authentic open tasks/ activities aiming at some outcomes. Projects foster students’ inquiry through autonomous learning and collaboration. Projects should help students to apply and perform learnt knowledge.
3. The objectives of a project-based lesson Expressed in competence-based can-do statements Basis for writing the project assessment scale/checklist Include main (language practice objectives) or subordinate (cultural knowledge objectives, learning strategy objectives)
3.1. Planning a project Step 1: Students and instructor agree on a project Step 2: Students and instructor determine the final outcome of the project Step 3: Students and instructor structure the project Step 4: Instructor prepares students for information gathering Step 5: Students gather information Step 6: Instructor prepares students for compiling and analyzing data Step 7: Students compile and analyze information Step 8: Instructor prepares students for the final activity Step 9: Students present the final product Step 10: Students and teachers evaluate the project
4. Definition of projects
4.1. A project is a specific kind of learning task, in which students are allowed to choose a topic and direction of its investigation. Therefore, the result is predictable only to a limited extent. It is a task that requires initiative, creativity and organizational skills, as well as undertaking responsibility for the solution to the problems connected with the topic.
5. Essential components
5.1. Sustained Inquiry, Authenticity, Student Voice and Choice, Reflection, Critique and Revision, Public Product, Challenging Problem and Question
6. Challenges
6.1. • Time consumption • Great efforts in preparation • Some requirements on resources • Teachers’ difficulties in designing authentic projects, designing the criteria, and the driving questions, providing accurate feedback, using IT to support • Students’ difficulties in knowing the appropriate learning goals, making inquiries systematically, managing time, collaborating • Learners using their own language • Some learners doing nothing • Groups working at different speeds
