The Effectiveness of Project –Based Learning in the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language

Abstract

<p><em>In the last years the project – based learning has become a popular teaching method in Latvia. Project work is a student-centred teaching approach; it motivates students to use language in real life situations and involves a great number of students’ feelings, talents, skills and knowledge in the education process. It is a way to express students’ own decisions, experience, almost dreams. This approach can be used for both: small kids (beginners’ level) and for adolescents (upper-intermediate level).The goal of this research is to analyse the effectiveness of project –based learning in the acquisition of English as a foreign language This investigation is based upon Legutke, Thomas, Fried-Booth, Haines, researches. </em></p><p> </p>

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“…What are trainee teachers" Masters students" motivational attitudes towards L2 English learning through PBL, as measured by a perception questionnaire? Based on RQ 1, we predict that positive attitudes will be shown towards L2 English learning through PBL, in line with previous empirical research in the field (Supe and Aivars, 2015). These answers will be triggered by the properties that characterize this teaching methodology, namely, it allows development of (a) autonomy as they are responsible for their own learning; (b) real language use; (c) capacity to monitor the learning process and the final project design; (d) skills to read, gather and select information; and (d) abilities to find solutions for problem-solving tasks (Pham, 2018;Poonpon, 2011;Simpson, 2011;Tan, 2004a;2004b).…”

“…Although 52% of students considered that projects were an effective learning method before they experienced PBL, 82% reported that their positive attitude towards studying through projects increased after the experiment. Supe and Aivars (2015), also reported that 53% of the L2 English learners preferred projects to ordinary English lessons (20%) before the experiment. These frequency rates increased after the experiment for both project work (86%) and the attitudes for ordinary lesson decreased (6%) after the experiment.…”

“…A great number of studies has investigated the role played by PBL in L2 English learning from two main perspectives (Gülbahar and Tinmaz, 2006;Kimsesiz et al, 2017;Poonpon, 2011;Praba et al, 2018;Simpson, 2011;Supe and Aivars, 2015). On the one hand, there are studies that have measured the effects of PBL on students" learning of L2 English language proficiency skills, namely, the four language skills in adults (Fried-Booth, 2002) or cross-cutting skills such a vocabulary in pre-school children (Kimsesiz et al, 2017) and writing skills in 14-to-15 year old youngsters (Praba et al, 2018).…”

“…In view of the findings reported in previous research, we predict that trainee teachers" Masters students will consider PBL as an approach that enables the improvement of their English language proficiency skills. These data are expected to be equally reflected in the responses concerning the integration of the four language skills, as well as the development of grammar and lexical array via the completion of a number of written or oral tasks (Levine, 2004;Srikrai, 2008;Supe and Aivars, 2015).…”

The Use of English Collocations among Croatian L1 Polytechnic Students

“…While this teaching and learning approach is sensible, logical and easily applicable in courses related to development of professional skills, such as information technology, human resource management, sales or marketing, where students are able to create authentic products or solutions to real problems, PBL is also a highly effective teaching method in foreign language courses, especially courses of language for professional purposes. Projects are also used in primary and secondary school instruction with various sets of goals and purposes (Supe & Kaupuzs, 2015). As the main focus of language instruction is still the development of the four language skills, we can connect all of them to PBL (Mikulec & Miller, 2011).…”