The importance of project work in teaching english

THE IMPORTANCE OF PROJECT WORK IN TEACHING ENGLISH

Project work may provide many opportunities to meet a variety of learning aims but it requires strong classroom management skills. Learners need independence in planning and realizing the work but they also need the teacher to act as a driver in ensuring it is carried out in a way that meets learning aims.
Project work is nowadays considered to be a really effective way of teaching English that connects learning and using the language. The most important thing, however, is the fact that it does not improve only language skills, but also common knowledge and physical and social skills. Nowadays, there are a lot of various methods for teaching a foreign language. Very often students are not motivated enough, because there is a gap between the language taught and the language students need in the real life, students are not interested much in the lessons, because they cannot use their knowledge, temperament, imagination and their point of view. Student-centered education, method of co-operation, method of projects – all these techniques help in a way to solve the problem of motivation, to inspire the students to learn a foreign language, to open their hidden potential abilities, for them to acquire a new language with enthusiasm. The method of projects is widely used all over the world mainly because it allows to combine all the students’ knowledge from different fields to solve one problem, and it also gives the opportunity to put these knowledge into practice, producing new ideas at the same time. In the European languages the word «project» is borrowed from Latin: the participle 'projectus' means «thrown out forward «, «striking one's eye». With reference to a lesson of foreign language, the project is specially organized by the teacher and independently carried out by pupils complex of the actions, finished with creation of a creative product. The work with the projects teacher can realize in groups and individually. It is necessary to note, that the method of projects helps children to seize such competences as: to be ready to work in collective, to accept the responsibility for a choice, to share the responsibility with members of the team, to analyze results of activity. According to Polat E.S., a method is a didactic category, a unity of techniques, of operations, aiming to master some field of practical or theoretical knowledge, or some skill. It’s also a way of cognition, a way of organization of the process of cognition. That is why, when we speak about the method of projects, we mean the way of achieving the aim through the detailed elaboration of the problem. The method of projects is based on the idea, which is the essence of the concept “project” and on its practical direction at the result. There are several reasons why the project learning is so successful. Students have to participate in the lessons, they are responsible for the results of their work. Moreover, they learn to cooperate in a group, listen to the others, think progressively, plan their work and allocate it. In addition, project work is an excellent way of establishing crosscurricular links. This result can be seen, realized and put into practice. In order to get this result, it’s necessary to teach the children to think by themselves; to find and solve problems, using knowledge from different fields; to foresee the results and possible consequences of different variants of solving these problems. Project work as a task-based learning method appeared first in the 1920s. Two American pragmatists Dewey and Kilpatrick thought about this in their essays and studies (Kilpatrick: «The Project Method» – 1918, Dewey: «Democracy and Education» – 1916). In the 1960s project learning has been a central issue in educational debates in Europe. Since that time, the term «Project» has become very fashionable.
It is necessary to explore ideas and opinions of English authors interested in projects. A well-known personality who deserves to be in the centre of attention is John Dewey. He can also be considered the father of project approach. Dewey says that project does not present topics as verbal formulations to be memorized, but brings conditions when pupils try their resourcefulness, ability to make right decisions, activity. And this certain degree of uneasiness, certain amount of obstacles should maintain pupils’ attention.
W. Kilpatrick, another follower of pragmatic pedagogy, indicates the differences between traditional and modern theory of teaching. Whereas, the traditional one represents learning from books, learning words and utterances of others, holding back from real life, learning through repetition and the promise that «what has been learned will be applied somewhere else and at some other time, the modern theory introduces learning through experience, situations of concrete personal life, pupils’ behaviour as a part of learning process and immediate practice.
Simon Haines explanation of project work should not be left out: «Projects are multi-skill activities focusing on topics or themes rather than on specific language targets. Of crucial importance is the part which students themselves play in the initial choice of subject matter and in the decisions related to appropriate working methods, the project 12 timetable and the eventual 'end-product'…project work provides students with opportunities to recycle known language and skills in a relatively natural context». Harmer then adds that projects involve investigation, reporting, commitment and dedication from students and the most important thing here is the end-product.
The Project Approach, a specific kind of project-based learning, brings a number of advantages to any classroom and represents best practices in 21^st century education. It fits securely within both a long history of innovative teaching and learning practices – dating back, at least, to the 16th century – and within the framework of today’s growing body of research on what students need to find success and fulfillment in the current (and future) world. The Project Approach refers to a set of teaching strategies that enable teachers to guide students through indepth studies of real-world topics. Projects have a complex but flexible framework within which teaching and learning are seen as interactive processes. When teachers implement the Approach successfully, students feel highly motivated and actively involved in their own learning, leading them to produce high-quality work and to grow as individuals and collaborators. A project, by definition, is an in-depth investigation of a real-world topic worthy of a student’s attention and effort. The study may be carried out with an entire class or with small groups of students – most often at the preschool, elemen-tary, and middle school levels. Projects typically do not constitute the whole educational program; instead, teachers use them alongside systematic instruction and as a means of achieving curricular goals. To summarize, it seems that projects are extended tasks which usually integrate language skills work by means of a number of activities. These activities combine in working towards an agreed goal and may include the following: planning, gathering of information, group discussion, problem solving, oral and written reporting and display. For the students to take the language as means of interaction between different cultures, it’s necessary not only to get them acquainted with the regional peculiarities of the country of a given language, but to involve them into an active dialogue between the cultures, for them to realize practical value of the language, its peculiarities of functioning in a close-to-life environment. Division of project work Project work cannot be characterised simply: there is a large number of possibilities how to describe what the project work is. The teacher´s imagination and fantasy is crucial. However, it is possible to innumerate some kinds of the most used projects. According of Diana L Fried-Booth, there are two main streams of project work: motivating activities and full-scale projects. Full-scale activities are almost always extended out of the classroom whereas motivating activities usually take place in the classroom. They also differ in their length. Motivating activities are a form of easier work, they are in fact a preparation for full-scale projects. These activities are usually shorter than full-scale projects and they are also more suitable for younger learners. Simon Haines divides projects into four main categories: information and research projects, survey projects, production projects and performance or organizational projects. We shall now tackle the classification of the common didactic types of the projects. First of all, we should clear out the main criteria, according to which the types of projects are differentiated:
– the activity or the method predominating in the project (research projects,
creative, role play, informative, practice-oriented projects);
– the subject(s), involved into the project (monoprojects: within one subject,
one field of knowledge; the project, made on the border of some subjects);
– the character of coordination (open, clear & vague, imitating the partici-
pants);
– the character of the contacts (among the schoolmates, classmates, the par-
ticipants from one town, region, country, or different countries of the world; inner
character, regional or international);
– the number of participants (personal, pair or group projects);
– duration of the project (short-term, middle-term or long-term projects).
1. According to the method dominating in a project we may distinguish the
following types of projects. Research projects. The projects of such kind demand a well-planned struc-ture, clear aims, substantiated actuality of the subject of the research, precise list of the sources of information, considered methods and results. They are very close to a real research and have the similar structure. Creative projects. Such projects imply the appropriate design of the results. As a rule, the structure of the collective activity of the students, elaborating the project, is not worked through in detail. It’s just planned and develops according to the logic of the process, accepted by the participants. It may be a newspaper, a composition, a film, acting out, a role play etc. Role play projects. In the projects of such kind the structure is also only planned and stays open up to the end of the project. The participants take certain roles (chosen according to the content & the character of the project, to the peculiarity of the problem), which can be literary characters or fictional roles, imitating social or business relations. Informative projects. The aim of such projects is to collect information about some object or phenomenon; to introduce it to the participants of the project; to analyse it; to generalize the facts; to sum up. Practice-oriented projects. Their peculiarity is the clear, distinct result, fixed
from the start, which must be directed to the social interests of the participants.
2. According to the number of the subjects involved into the project, there are several types of them:
Monoprojects. As a rule, they are carried out within the limits of one subject. But then the most difficult units, the most complicated problems are chosen (for example, in the course of a foreign language the topics connected with the regional
geography, social studies, history can be taken). The work at the lessons should be
carefully planned; the students should be divided into groups (within which the
roles are distributed). Before they start students themselves choose the way in
which they’ll present their work. The projects made on the border of several subjects. As a rule, they are made at the extracurricular time. They can be of a small size, dealing with 2-3 subjects, or great long ones, involving the whole school, aiming to solve any complicated problem, which is important for every participant (for example, “culture of communication”, at the border of the centuries” etc). Such projects must be coordinated by the specialists; several creative groups are to work in a harmonious unity; they ought to have clear tasks for a research; their presentations (both intermediate and final) should be well-worked through. 3. According to the type of coordination we may distinguish the following types of projects. The projects with clear, open coordination. Projects with vague coordination. 4. As for the character of the contacts, this criterion divides the projects into following groups. Internal, regional projects. They are organized within one school (including one subject or several ones) or among different schools or grades in a region or in a country. International projects. Their participants are the representatives of different countries. Such projects are of great importance, since to be realized they need some information technologies. 1. By the number of participants the projects can be also different: personal (between 2 partners from different schools, regions, countries), pair (between/among the couples of participants) or group projects (among the groups). And it’s very important to organize group work properly from the methodical viewpoint (both inside a group of participants, close to each other and in a group, uniting the members from different schools, countries etc). The role of a coordinator is especially important in this case.
2. According to the duration of the projects, they can be short-term (in order to solve one little problem or a part of a more important problem); middle-term (1 or 2 months) and long-term (up to a year). Naturally, in reality we usually deal with combined types of projects, which may unite the peculiarities of research and creative projects, or practice-oriented and research ones. Every type has his own way of coordination, deadlines, stages and number of participants. That’s why, working on a project we ought to bear in mind its peculiarities and characteristic features.
To sum up we shall notice that projects based learning has a lot of advantages. Working on projects, students have an opportunity to practice and learn English language and at the same time they gain a lot of new information and develop various important skills. All the mentioned aspects of projects based learning show that it is a true approach to language teaching and learning.