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| http://blog.teacherspayteachers.com/project-based-learning/ |
One of the current trends in education is Project-based learning (henceforward PBL). For those who aren't familiar with the term, PBL is "a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or challenge" (www.bie.org/about/what_pbl). Therefore, it integrates different skills and disciplines, and as a result, learning becomes more meaningful to the student, making it longer-lasting and ultimately enabling them to develop key skills for lifelong learning. I'm a big fan of PBL (who wouldn't be?), but I also think it is a bit limited when it comes to language learning, which is why I have never designed a course solely based on PBL.
To begin with, in order to incorporate PBL successfully into your course, your students should have reached a certain level of proficiency. In other words, you would have to design a fairly basic project for absolute beginners. It is possible (I'm not saying it isn't), but language instruction would far outweigh project work. It is a lot easier once your students feel confident reading, listening, writing and speaking, and you can give them increasingly complex projects that involve extracting information, summarising, paraphrasing, using language for a particular purpose and other valuable skills necessary for academic success across all different subjects.
Another reason why I have never designed a full-on PBL course is that I believe guided language tuition is necessary even when students already feel confident with the language. A lot of them take external examinations, which require a lot of time and preparation. I believe that PBL works well when you are helping students with practical skills, but not so well when a certain level of accuracy is necessary (particularly when writing and speaking). This could be partly because you don't assess projects as a language product alone--you take into account other components, some of which may have little to do with English language skills.
However, PBL is great in the sense that it poses a challenge for the students. For one, it forces them to work as part of a team, in which each member plays a different role. Second, I normally ask students to research something and create a product resulting from their research (for example, looking at the differences between living in a small town and in a big city, and creating a poster to summarise their findings). This means that students have to read, understand and rephrase using their own words, transforming source material into a different product. Finally, I normally have my students present their projects to the rest of the class orally.
The process of working on a project is complex, and if my students lack maturity, I guide their work by breaking down their tasks into steps, providing them with checklists and ensuring they understand every step. If they are a bit older and are already used to the method, they make their own checklists and work more independently.
As far as English is concerned, the benefits are multiple. Students read authentic material, and very often encounter words that are part of the same semantic group. Context helps students learn vocabulary, and unfamiliar words are identified and their meaning elicited. They are exposed to live English. Of course, each student is different and weaker students need more help, but the exposure to authentic material together with (online) dictionaries, teachers and teammates takes some of the pressure off.
Have you tried PBL when teaching English? How was your experience?
