Project Work in Teaching English

Beyond spoon-feeding

In many language courses the teaching at lower levels tends to follow a pattern of what could be described as 'spoon-feeding' - the teacher chooses the elements of the language to teach (the food), plans how to present it (puts it onto a spoon) and teaches (feeds) the learners with it, as if they were children. However, just as children become progressively more independent and in due course have to assume full responsibility for themselves as adults, so learners of a language, as they advance, have to become more independent and assume greater responsibility for their own learning.

To be successful at an advanced level, you will have to commit yourself not only to attending classes but also to spending a substantial amount of time studying out of class. This should partly be directed by your teacher (homework and preparation) and partly through your own initiative.

A typical student with three to five hours of English classes per week should expect to spend about the same number of hours studying out of class - doing grammar exercises and writing tasks, learning vocabulary, reading extensively, and so on. The fewer hours you have with a teacher, the more you will have to work on your own. Without this kind of commitment you cannot expect to make a lot of progress.

1. How many hours of English classes do you have each week?

2. How many more hours can you commit to learning English each week?

It is easy to commit yourself to a theoretical number of hours per week, but unless you set aside particular days and times, you will keep finding you are too busy doing other things. So decide now which days and times you are going to dedicate to studying English.

3. In the light of your commitment, how much progress do you expect to make? In what areas (e.g. listening/speaking/reading/writing, accuracy/fluency)? Be specific about your objectives.

Ways of studying

Making good progress depends not only on how much time you spend but also how you go about studying. For example, how do you organise the things you want to learn?

4. Write about how you organise the notes you take in class and the things you want to learn when studying on your own.

5. What techniques do you use to memorise things?

6. When you are studying alone, you need good reference materials. What dictionaries, grammar books and other materials do you have?

The quantum leap

Ironically, one of the greatest problems that often arises among more advanced learners is the fact that they can already function in English for a lot of everyday purposes and, instead of extending their knowledge, go on just using what they already know. To be successful at an advanced level, thin is not enough. You have to make a `quantum leap', in other words a significant jump towards something much more sophisticated and wide-ranging. You have to aim to function like a mature, well-educated native speaker of the language. This means that you need to be able to draw upon your experience of the world and to have a reasonable, though not specialist, knowledge of any subject you are speaking or writing about. The content is vitally important, because if this is too limited, your language will be correspondingly limited - you won't need and therefore won't use more advanced structures and vocabulary.

7. How old are you?

8. What areas do you feel you have some knowledge about?

9. In what areas do you feel you have very little knowledge?

There are three areas that contribute substantially to making the quantum leap and particularly to writing in a more sophisticated way: observation, imagination and thinking.

10. Do you consider yourself to be good at

a) observing

b) imagining

c) thinking

Explain your answers.

Good luck with your advanced course.

Ask them to read the text and answer the questions. Set a time limit of thirty minutes. Tell your students that you will want to collect the completed handouts in to read, but that you are interested in what they say, not in how correct the English is. With students that finish early, take the opportunity to speak to individuals and discuss some of their answers.

3. When they have finished, initiate a discussion about what they have read and written. Ask them if they feel they have learnt anything important that they perhaps hadn't thought about before. Encourage an exchange of views among the members of the class. Collect in the completed handouts.

4. Later, go through the handouts, noting down any points you want to use for feedback and any you want to keep for your own reference. Make comments on the handouts about the contents where you feel this would be helpful to the student but don't correct. In a follow-up lesson, preferably the lesson immediately following, go over any points that emerged from the handouts. In particular, you may want to draw attention to reference materials you would recommend.

Variation

In Step 3, after the students have completed their handouts, put them into groups of four to compare and discuss what they wrote. In particular, ask them to discuss the specific contexts where the quantum leap would be important and the sort of tasks that might involve the three areas of observing, imagining and thinking. This can be very valuable but you will need to set aside about twenty minutes extra.

Ups and Downs

1. Initiate a discussion on `ups and downs' - when we feel better or not so good. Draw the first to these graphs on the board, showing your own ups and downs. Explain your day rhythms with reference to the graphs.

Ask your students to copy the graphs and complete them with their own rhythms. When they are ready, ask them to explain their graphs to their colleagues. If your class has more than about twelve students, divide the class into groups of up to twelve for this phase; monitor them and when they have finished get the groups to report to the whole class the kinds of things they found.

English-Speaking Countries

1. Divide the class into pairs. Ask the pairs to draw up a list of English-speaking

speaking countries, that is to say, countries where English is an official language

or is widely spoken. Be available to help supply the names of countries in English.

2. On the board draw five columns and head them with the names of the main continents. Ask your students for the names of the countries they wrote down in Step 1 and write them in the appropriate column. When you have exhausted their lists, add any others you feel they should know. The main countries are:

Europe: Cyprus, Gibraltar, Ireland, Malta, The United Kingdom

Africa: Botswana, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Asia: Bangladesh, Brunei, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka

Australia and the Pacific: Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Tonga

The Americas: Canada, The United States, Belize, many of the Caribbean islands, including The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, the Falkland Islands

3. Explain to the class that you want them to do a project on one of these countries but not on England or the United States. Tell the class to form groups of three or four. Let your students choose their partners, while making sure no individuals get left out. Ask each group to choose a country. Allow more than one group to work on the same country - they often use quite different approaches and present interestingly different work - but you may decide you want your students to do different work on as broad a range of countries as possible, in which case they should all choose different countries.

4. When your students have chosen their countries, ask each group, for your reference, to give you a piece of paper with the names of the members in their group and which country they are going to work on.

5. Establish with the class the following:

a) how much you want each student to contribute to the project;

b) the content - set an upper limit of one third dedicated to the general background (geography and history, currency, industries, etc.) and insist that the greater part should be dedicated to the use of the English language, e.g. the role of English, how it differs from standard British/American English, periodicals published in English, literature, etc. The possible areas of focus here vary considerably from country to country and you may need to discuss with each group those areas that would offer the most potential, e.g. the question of language variety is more appropriate where most or all of the population is English-speaking, the periodicals published in English are more relevant where English is one of the many languages used in the country;

c) the deadline by which the project must be handed in.

6. Discuss with your students what sources of information they are going to use. Students work mostly from five sources:

a) encyclopedia entries;

b) books;

c) newspaper and magazine articles;

d) computer programs;

e) information from embassies, high commissions and tourist offices.

You may be able to provide support from material you yourself possess - this is where it is useful to have a list of groups and their countries, so that you know who to give it to.

CONCLUSIONS

The objectives of the paper were to highlight the importance of the project work in teaching English, to discover how it influences the students during the educational process and if this type of work in the classroom helps to learn the language.

On the basis of the literary sources studied we can come to the following conclusions that project work has advantages like the increased motivation when 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-centred; 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.

The disadvantages of project work are the noise which is made during the class, also projects are time-consuming and the students use their mother tongue too much, the weaker students are lost and not able to cope with the task and the assessment of projects is very difficult. However, every type of project can be held without any difficulties and so with every advantage possible.

The types of projects are information and research projects, survey projects, production projects and performance and organizational projects which can be performed differently as in reports, displays, wall newspapers, parties, plays, etc.

Though project work may not be the easiest instructional approach to implement, the potential pay-offs are many. At the very least, with the project approach, teachers can break with routine by spending a week or more doing something besides grammar drills and technical reading.

The organization of project work may seem difficult but if we do it step by step it should be easy. We should define a theme, determine the final outcome, structure the project, identify language skills and strategies, gather information, compile and analyse the information, present the final product and finally evaluate the project. Project work demands a lot of hard work from the teacher and the students, nevertheless, the final outcome is worth the effort.

Throughout the course paper we can see that project work has more positive sides than negative and is effective during the educational process. Students are likely to learn the language with the help of projects and have more fun.

To conclude, project work is effective, interesting, entertaining and should be used at the lesson.

LIST OF REFERENCES

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2. Phillips D., Burwood S., Dunford H. Projects with Young Learners. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. - 160p.

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5. Hutchinson T. Introduction to Project Work. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. - 400p.

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18. Gray S. Communication through Projects. - Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. - 350p.

19. Morris P. The Management of Projects. - London: Thomas Telford Services Ltd., 1994. - 450p.

20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project Work