Increasing EFL Students’ Responsibility with Learning Activities through Project Work
This action research project highlights the increased responsibility of Grade 7 students when implementing project work in an English foreign language classroom, in a public, co-ed school in Colombia. The action research was carried out over fi ve months and the results show the positive attitudes and behavior that students displayed towards project work in class, the importance of scaffolding to students’ confi dence with class activities, and good grades with positive feedback enhancing students’ learning. Diffi culties found related to cancelled classes, and students’ negative attitudes when groups were assigned by the teacher, along with unequal group work distribution.
Received: 28-03-07 / Accepted: 05-08-07
How to reference this article:
Toro Bustamante, C. A. (2007). Increasing EFL Students’ Responsibility with Learning Activities through Project Work. Íkala. 12(1), pp. 212 – 242.
Burns, A. (1999). Collaborative Action Research for English Language Teachers.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Crookes, G. (2003). A Practicum in TESOL. Professional Development through Teaching
Practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge Language Teaching Library.
Edwards, J., and Jones, K. (1999). Students’ Views of Learning Mathematics in Collaborative Small Groups. In O. Zaslavsky (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME23). Haifa, Israel, PME. Retrieved January 8, 2007 from http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/41273/
Freeman, D., and Freeman, Y. (1994). How does Learning takes Place in Explorer Classroom?
Between Worlds: Access to Second Language Acquisition. Portsmouth, NH, USA: Heinemann.
Freeman, D. (1998). Doing Teacher-research: from Inquiry to Understanding.
Canada: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.
Fried-Booth, D. (1993). Project Work. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Hein, G. (1991). Constructivist Learning Theory. Retrieved August 7, 2006 from http://www.exploratorium.edu/i±/resources/constructivistlearning.html
Intel Corporation (2006). Designing Effective Projects: Characteristics of Projects. BeneF
tsof Project-Based Learning. Retrieved July 11, 2006 from http://www.intel.com/corporate/
Jonhson, A. (2005). A Short Guide to Action Research. Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education Inc.
Law, B., and Eckes, M. (2000). More-Than-Just-Surviving Handbook. ESL for every Classroom Teacher. Winnipeg, Canada: Portage & Main Press.
Lipscomb, L., Swanson, J., and West, A. (2004). Scaffolding. In M. Orey (Ed.),
Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved June 11, 2007 from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/
Marzano, R., Pickering, D., and Pollock, J. (2001). Collaborative Learning.
Classroom Instruction that Works. VA, USA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Phillips, D., Burwood, S., and Dunford, H. (2003) Projects with Young Learners. Oxford,
England: Oxford University Press.
Sánchez, J. (2002). Project Work: An integrative strategy. Colombian Applied Linguistics
Journal, 4, 35-49.
Scharle, A., and Szabo, A. (2000). Responsibility and Autonomy. Learner Autonomy. A Guide to Developing Learner Responsibility. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Stoller, F. (2002). Project Work: A Means to Promote Language and Content. In J. Richards and W. Renandya (Eds.), Methodology in Language Teaching. An Anthology of Current Practice. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Williams, M., and Burden, R. (1997). Psychology for Language Teachers. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Copyright (c) 2007 Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.