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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. [11,237]
Assessment of project work is another difficult issue. This is not because project work is difficult to assess, but because assessment criteria and procedures vary from country to country. So there are two basic principles for assessing project work:
a) not just the language
The most obvious point to note about project work is that language is only a part of the total project. Consequently, it is not very appropriate to assess a project only on the basis of linguistic accuracy. Credit must be given for the overall impact of the project, the level of creativity it displays, the neatness and clarity of presentation, and most of all the effort that has gone into its production. There is nothing particularly unusual in this. It is normal practice in assessing creative writing to give marks for style and content, etc. Many education systems also require similar factors to be taken into account in the assessment of students’ oral performance in class. So a wide-ranging ‘profile’ kind of assessment that evaluates the whole project is needed.
b) not just mistakes
If at all possible, we should not correct mistakes on the final project itself, or at least not in ink. It goes against the whole spirit of project work. A project usually represents a lot of effort and is something that the students will probably want to keep. It is a shame to put red marks all over it. This draws attention to the things that are wrong about the project over the things that are good. On the other hand, students are more likely to take note of errors pointed out to them in project work because the project means much more to them than an ordinary piece of class work. There are two useful techniques to handle the errors:
• Encouraging the students to do a rough draft of their project first. Correcting this in their normal way. The students can then incorporate corrections in the final product.
• If errors occur in the final product, correcting in pencil or on a separate sheet of paper attached to the project. A good idea was suggested by a teacher in Spain to get students to provide a photocopy of their project. Corrections can then be put on the photocopy. But fundamentally, the most important thing to do about errors is to stop worrying about them. Projects are real communication. When we communicate, we do the best we can with what we know, and because we usually concentrate on getting the meaning right, errors in form will naturally occur. It is a normal part of using and learning a language. Students invest a lot of themselves in a project and so they will usually make every effort to do their best work. [13,106]
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. It has the added virtue in this era of rapid change of being a long- established and well-tried method of teaching.
1.2 Types of Project Work
Project work involves multi-skill activities which focus on a theme of interest rather than specific language tasks. In project work, students work together to achieve a common purpose, a concrete outcome (e.g., a brochure, a written report, a bulletin board display, a video, an article for a school newspaper, etc). Haines identifies four types of projects:
1. Information and research projects which include such kinds of work as reports, displays, etc.
2. Survey projects which may also include displays, but more interviews, summaries, findings, etc.
3. Production projects which foresee the work with radio, television, video, wall newspapers, etc.
4. Performance/Organizational projects which are connected with parties, plays, drama, concerts, etc.[1,65]
What these different types of projects have in common is their emphasis on student involvement, collaboration, and responsibility. In this respect, project work is similar to the cooperative learning and task-oriented activities that are widely endorsed by educators interested in building communicative competence and purposeful language learning. However, it differs from such approaches, it typically requires students to work together over several days or weeks, both inside and outside the classroom, often in collaboration with speakers of the target language who are not normally part of the educational process.
Students in tourism, for example, might decide to generate a formal report comparing modes of transportation; those in hotel/restaurant management might develop travel itineraries. In both projects, students might create survey questionnaires, conduct interviews, compile, sort, analyze, and summarize survey data and prepare oral presentations or written reports to present their final product. In the process, they would use the target language in a variety of ways: they would talk to each other, read about the focal point of their project, write survey questionnaires, and listen carefully to those whom they interview. As a result, all of the skills they are trying to master would come into play in a natural way.
Let us consider, for example, the production of a travel brochure. To do this task, tourism students would first have to identify a destination, in their own country or abroad, and then contact tourist agencies for information about the location, including transportation, accommodations in all price ranges, museums and other points of interest, and maps of the region. They would then design their brochure by designating the intended audience, deciding on an appropriate length for their suggested itinerary, reviewing brochures for comparable sites, selecting illustrations, etc. Once the drafting begins, they can exchange material, evaluate it, and gradually improve it in the light of criteria they establish. Finally, they will put the brochure into production, and the outcome will be a finished product, an actual brochure in a promotional style. Projects allow students to use their imagination and the information they contain does not always have to be factual. [1,80]
One of the great benefits of project work is its adaptability. We can do projects on almost any topic. They can be factual or fantastic. Projects can, thus, help to develop the full range of the learners’ capabilities. Projects are often done in poster format, but students can also use their imagination to experiment with the form. It encourages a focus on fluency.
Each project is the result of a lot of hard work. The authors of the projects have found information about their topic, collected or drawn pictures, written down their ideas, and then put all the parts together to form a coherent presentation.
The projects are very creative in terms of both content and language. Each project is a unique piece of communication, created by the project writers themselves. This element of creativity makes project work a very personal experience. The students are writing about aspects of their own lives, and so they invest a lot of themselves in their project.
Project work is a highly adaptable methodology. It can be used at every level from absolute beginner to advanced. There is a wide range of possible project activities, and the range of possible topics is limitless.
Positive motivation is the key to successful language learning, and project work is particularly useful as a means of generating it.
Another point is that this work is a very active medium like a kind of structured playing. Students are not just receiving and producing words, they are:
• collecting information;
• drawing pictures, maps, diagrams, and charts;
• cutting out pictures;
• arranging texts and visuals;
• colouring;
• carrying out interviews and surveys;
• possibly making recordings, too.
Lastly, project work gives a clear sense of achievement. It enables all students to produce a worthwhile product. This feature of project work makes it particularly well suited to the mixed ability class, because students can work at their own pace and level. The brighter students can show what they know, unconstrained by the syllabus, while at the same time the slower learners can achieve something that they can take pride in, perhaps compensating for their lower language level by using more photos and drawings. [14,320]
A foreign language can often seem a remote and unreal thing. This inevitably has a negative effect on motivation, because the students do not see the language as relevant to their own lives. If learners are going to become real language users, they must learn that English is not only used for talking about British or American things, but can be used to talk about their own world.
Firstly, project work helps to integrate the foreign language into the network of the learner’s own communicative competence. It creates connections between the foreign language and the learner’s own world. It encourages the use of a wide range of communicative skills, enables learners to exploit other spheres of knowledge, and provides opportunities for them to write about the things that are important in their own lives.
Secondly, it helps to make the language more relevant to learners’ actual needs. When students use English to communicate with other English speakers, they will want, and be expected, to talk about aspects of their own lives – their house, their family, their town, etc. Project work thus enables students to rehearse the language and factual knowledge that will be of most value to them as language users.
Another important issue in language teaching is the relationship between language and culture. It is widely recognized that one of the most important benefits of learning a foreign language is the opportunity to learn about other cultures and English, as an international language, should not be just for talking about the ways of the English – speaking world, but also as a means of telling the world about one’s own culture. [16,157]
There is a growing awareness among language teachers that the process and content of the language class should contribute towards the general educational development of the learner. Project work is very much in tune with modern views about the purpose and nature of education:
1. There is the question of educational values. Most modern school curricula require all subjects to encourage initiative, independence, imagination, self- discipline, co-operation, and the development of useful research skills. Project work is a way of turning such general aims into practical classroom activity.
2. Cross-curricula approaches are encouraged. For language teaching this means that students should have the opportunity to use the knowledge they gain in other subjects in the English class.
So we can come to the conclusion that project work activities are very effective for the modern school curricula and should be used while studying.
1.3 Organizing Project Work
Although recommendations as to the best way to develop projects in the classroom vary, most are consistent with the eight fundamental steps. Though the focus is upon the collaborative task, the various steps offer opportunities to build on the students’ heightened awareness of the utility of the language by working directly on language in class. In short, language work arises naturally from the project itself, ‘developing cumulatively in response to a basic objective, namely, the project’ [2,57]. Strategically orchestrated lessons devoted to relevant elements of language capture students’ attention because they have immediate applicability to their project work.
Step I: Defining a theme.
In collaboration with students, we identify a theme that will amplify the students’ understanding of an aspect of their future work and provide relevant language practice. In the process, teachers will also build interest and commitment. By pooling information, ideas, and experiences through discussion, questioning, and negotiation, the students will achieve consensus on the task ahead.
Step II: Determining the final outcome.
We define the final outcome of the project (e.g., written report, brochure, debate, video) and its presentation (e.g., collective or individual). We agree on objectives for both content and language.
Step III: Structuring the project.
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