Курсовая работа: Project Work in Teaching English

Fried-Booth in his book “Project Work” suggests a more teacher-directed example suitable for junior learners at an elementary level, in which they are asked to collect food labels or wrappings from tins, cartons, packets, etc. for a period of a week. These are used to create a wall display with a map of the world illustrated with the labels, which are attached to the relevant countries of origin and export with coloured threads and pins. The map is then used for oral practice and controlled writing.

Another scientist, Haines, in “Projects for the EFL Classroom” considers four types of project work, namely: informational and research projects, survey projects, production projects, and performance and organizational projects.

The theoretical value of the course paper is in the generalization and detailed analysis of the fundamental characteristics of project work, the difference between the types of project work and their effectiveness.

The practical value of the paper lies in the selection of various project work English teaching procedures.

Chapter I. Project Work in Teaching English

1.1 Characteristics of Project Work

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-centred 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. [7,40]

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. [1,38]

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 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.

· A context is established which balances the need for fluency and accuracy.[1,40]

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. [7,112]

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 favour 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.