Humanising Language Teaching
Year 3; Issue 6; November 2001

Student Centred Project Work

By Jean Crocker J.F.Crocker@ncl.ac.uk

Levels: Various
Time: 2 x 1.5 hours per week, for 8 weeks, plus 2 presentation sessions

The students
The students have come to the UK to study various subjects at university, in a language which is not their mother tongue. They have enrolled on a full-time summer English course to prepare for the challenge. I hope teachers may find ideas here to adapt for their own students.

Aims
To provide opportunities for students to choose a topic related to their future studies, plan their work, go out on visits, work with the teacher as adviser rather than director, practise all their language skills, present their findings to each other at a poster presentation and a conference, write a report, find their way round the university, get to know fellow students, and gain confidence.

Procedure
There is an introductory session with the purpose of motivating all the students. There are some students who need to learn to work more independently of the teacher, which project work will help them to do, but who may be the least motivated to spend time on it, preferring to have a teacher in front of the class directing their activities. So the expectation of independent work at UK universities is emphasised. It is pointed out that supervisors do not necessarily take a parental role as in some countries, and that undergraduates as well as postgraduates are expected to do research. Project work is most like the work that students will have to do in their departments, and we can help them with it. Students also receive a Project Work Guide which includes a timetable for the eight weeks, advice on each stage of the project, and a list of topics chosen by previous students. I have compiled this over several years with the aim of providing a visibly coherent structure. Posters and reports by previous students are on display, on topics ranging from English Teaching in Korea and the UK to Mad Cow Disease. Students are very interested in what has been achieved before, and the quality of work usually increases from year to year.

Students then move into project classes organised according to academic field - Engineering, Social Sciences and so on. They are encouraged to form groups of 2 or 3 around topics that are useful to them and can be done in eight weeks. New ideas are welcome. Group work promotes discussion and provides support at stressful times like going out on a visit and giving a talk. In a small survey of students on degree courses who had done projects the previous summer, 17 out of 24 said that working in a group was more enjoyable than working alone, and 15 said that it was better for confidence. However, some students do need to work alone if their chosen topic does not fit with any of the others, so we are flexible.

As groups select topics, they start to write their own research plan as a group, to include what they want to find out and the method by which they intend to do so. Over the next week or so, we try to support the students' choices by working out with them relevant places to visit (such as a water treatment plant or an agricultural show), or experts to contact (who could be at the Civic Centre or in the students' future university departments, for example). We have a list of previous contacts, but there are new ones every year. Given the time constraints and potential problems of communication, it is often better if the teacher makes the arrangements. The students then work out what questions to ask during the visit; these are genuinely their questions, on topics the teacher may not know much about, though we will aid communication by correcting the English. The students then go off, communicate directly, and gather real information. Students also do library research, and may conduct surveys, etc.

Groups plan the written report and decide who will write which part of it, and we encourage them to get some of it written at this stage, or there will be too much to do at the end.

Lessons start with input, e.g. on how to write an introduction, or to give a talk as a group (the latter with expressions such as Now I'm going to hand over to Mehrdad). Academic project work has to teach conventions because students will need to express their initiative and creativity within these in order to succeed on their degree courses. Later in the lesson, students discuss their work with their colleagues, consult the teacher, or go out on a visit or to the library.

So the students have practised all their language skills in researching a topic that they are genuinely interested in. The next stage is to start reporting their findings.

Groups produce a joint poster display in the fourth week, involving considerable planning and discussion. A key piece of information for the authors of a poster, as used at academic conferences anyway, is that it should tell a complete story by itself, even when no speaker is there to present it. Students use pictures and graphics a lot. Some posters are interactive: one on TESOL incorporated language-teaching games, and one on taboo terms invited people to write taboo expressions from their languages. The text is usually produced by computer but could be handwritten. Students practise presenting the poster in class. At this stage both fellow-students and teachers make suggestions for improvement.

The poster presentations take place in the fifth week, in one large room. They are made to an audience of new students who are attending the course for the final four weeks, and who know that their colleagues have brought the posters specifically to show to them. There is a continuous flow of new students from poster to poster, and the authors present the main points and answer questions as people show an interest. The students are engaged in authentic communication and the new and 'old' students can integrate. A video is made of the event, and the posters remain on display for the rest of the course. The new students do project work too; they write a report and give a talk at the conference, but do not make a poster as there is no time.

Attention then returns to the written reports. As these are being completed towards the end of the course, there is an atmosphere of concentrated study. The teachers correct and comment on the first drafts, which is certainly what the students want us to do, but we do not write on the final reports. Each is kept together with a plastic spine, with a transparency top and bottom, and put on display. Some reports are really beautifully produced, with graphics in colour, etc.

Finally, students prepare to give talks at the conference. They practise in class, with peer and teacher feedback. They are encouraged to use the OHP, because they need to know how to for the future, and because it really aids communication. They sometimes use other visual aids: a group of dentistry students made a video of interviews they conducted in the street about how people looked after their teeth, and architecture students have shown slides of buildings. The conference itself takes all day, with concurrent sessions, as there are over 100 students. Similar topics are grouped together to promote interest and discussion. At times when students are not speaking, they are encouraged to attend other sessions and contribute questions and comments. Students take on the tasks of a convenor, such as introducing speakers. There is a great deal of student-student interaction. In fact, the students have taken over from the teachers. They address their colleagues, while the teachers sit at the back as part of the audience. The students' written reports are available for reference, and the posters are still on display. The students have applied all their language skills to their own academic subjects. Their expertise is clear and the mood is high. It is very motivating for teachers to see how students have gained in confidence and applied their considerable talents. This is the point of transition between the English course and the academic courses that are about to start.

Jean works at the Centre for Lifelong Learning at Newcastle University and at Gateshead College. She teaches English, and Linguistics topics such as Geordie dialect. She would welcome discussion.