Project-based learning is considered as a very dynamic approach for teaching in which students have the possibilities to explore real-world problems and challenges, simultaneously developing their language and communicative skills while working in small collaborative groups and with the great influence of the Communicative Approach students are really encouraged to participate more actively in their learning process. Students’ motivation in the communicative approach is backing by the meaningful learning environment with authentic communication promoted in the classroom by teachers.This assignment is made of analyzing the project Cambell R, (1996): The Music Project”, from It’s Magazines.
This analysis is done in two parts: Part 1 requires to make an analysis and comparison with the theoretical framework laid down by Ribé and Vidal, Fied-Booth and Legutke and Thomas for project work, and part 2 requires an adaptation of the music project to our own teaching-learning context. It is valid to mention here that the Music project presents topics which can be more suitable to be worked with secondary students or teenagers than with children. The activities demand from students the ability to develop their communicative skills (when they exchange ideas, express agreements, elicit ideas, etc), their cognitive factors (analysing the different musical instruments, the ideas they exchange to organize a band, or for making the cover of the CD).Besides, the project develops students’ Global personality, enhancing their attitude and motivation through authentic and meaningful tasks.
This kind of projects integrate the language and contents and involve the aspects of their individual personalities with their previous experience and knowledge, and encourage them to use their creativity and imagination which is the paramount factor to execute the project.Type of project Ribé and Vidal (1993) They classify tasks into three types of generations, the first one demands communicative development, the second requires communicative and cognitive development and the third demands communicative, cognitive and global development. This project contains many communicative and collaborative characteristic that make it fits into the third generation which involves the language and cognitive strategies from the previous two generations plus the development of student’s personalities.The tasks provided throughout the project intends to develop students’ communicative competences and link with the idea of the language negotiation that makes students able to develop authentic and real work, and the opportunity to share or use their previous experiences and music preferences. To include their musical, artistic, literary interests, hobbies and concerns is required as well as a great demand of creativity and imagination. These kind of meaningful tasks promote and enhance pupils’ motivation in their learning process.
Fried-Booth (1986)Distinguishes two types of activities in projects, the first one takes place within the classroom (bridging activities) and the second one refers about the activities outside the classrooms (full-scale projects). The two activities are link by the topic and the activities that students have to do outside the classroom as an extension and practice of the ones that they did in classrooms to motivate them. The activities that we can consider as bridging are the ones provided in the steps 1 and 2, in those, students are required to talk about the type of musical instruments that they prefer, elicit their characteristics, express their preferences about them, answer questions about themselves, and exchange opinions about the steps that they have to follow to join a band.These kinds of activities help students to develop their communicative and cognitive skills and their Global personality. Moreover we have to mention that they involve the use of controlled vocabulary (the input provided and the output guided by the clues and tasks in the project like writing lyrics, read information, follow steps, etc) and different communicative activities proposed in the tasks throughout the project.
The bridging activities developed in the classroom let students willpower and make their experience really meaningful when they handle with real and authentic information like signing a contract or following steps for joining a band.On the other hand Fried-Booth stressed the most important part of the projects in the outside classroom activities known as the full-scale project. In this project students are required to work with computers to design a cover of a record, or practice playing a song which they will record. These kinds of activities provide plenty of opportunities to use the language outside the classroom that give great chance to improve their English in real context and situations. Legutke and Thomas (1991)They have a humanistic education since they give project work a wide-ranging societal and educational role; for they claim a project ‘needs to be understood as rooted in an educational philosophy which aims at providing the direction, and some possible routes, to a more democratic and participatory society.
’ They set tasks within an interactive process which involves the ‘I’ and ‘we dimensions’ which are never the same because of people’s differences; and also the ‘Theme’ which is, of course, affected by interests and interpretations of both the learner and the teacher.Thus, from Legutke and Thomas’ points of views it is noteworthy to refer to ‘The experiential cycle’ on which they put much emphasis when developing a project work. Regarding the music project to be carried out by the students; it is undeniably impossible to reject the idea of such a project to be mapped out in a humanistic and empirical approach; and to be it thought up on the six steps which are to be flexible as regards the sequencing of activities to attain the final task once the ‘target task’ is identified by both the learners and the teacher through a backward planning. First, in this music project it is democratically stated the theme to embrace and undertake during the development of the task on the part of the learners and the teacher, as well.There is negotiation among all participants which foster motivation so as to define goals and procedures and to overcome the aims of such a project. It is also empirical as this dynamic balance between process and product requires experience and thinking on the part of the doers or builders of the project.
Second, there is an opening of the topic or theme to develop in the project and it is done through the vocabulary items aimed to introducing the students into the music and some musical instruments issues. It is worth noting that these first two steps are related to what these authors call ‘backward planning’.Moreover, this task requires learners to research and collect data about several aspects related to music such as styles, record companies, recording contracts and covers, among others. Regarding preparing data presentation students have to be ready for giving information and reasons to the other groups about their target task to undertake; not to mention the fact that all of this aims at fostering and enhancing their motivation and self-confidence at the time of presenting it. As regards the last step, that of evaluation, is reflected on the contest they endure in order to become famous and be the winners of the project work.
It is paramount to say that the evaluation is consistent during the preparation and development of this collaborative project work. In this co-operative task, the role of the teacher as a ‘co-ordinator of the learning process is very important, which devolves a certain amount of power and control to the learner in this communicative project-based activities. Thus, learner´s role get immersed into the ‘learning here and now’ topics which involve then affectively, intellectually and physically. At the same time students become discoverers through their experimentation and reflection on what they do on their own.Campbell, R.
(1996): “The Music Project”, from It´s Magazine This project is very well structured according to the necessities it was created to supply; it is also updated taking into account the teaching methodology, the tasks, the impact in the population, the assessment, etc. At the same time, it is an interesting way to motivate students to get immersed in the second language, full of fresh ideas and techniques to handle appropriately. However, it is relevant to make some adaptations due to there are marked differences talking about the target population with its needs and level, the curriculum design and objectives.First of all, the group of students on which the project with its adaptations would be applied, is placed at a school in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, a country located in the north part of South America.
Bogotá is divided in twenty big zones, one of them is named Bosa, it is situated in the south-west part of the city with a population of 259.454 inhabitants that are considered of low income. In that zone there are 28 public schools, one of them is “Fernando Mazuera Villegas” a mixed school that offers kinder-garden, elementary and secondary school.This is a big school in which there are 39 groups in secondary, eight belong to tenth grade that is the group chosen to apply the project.
In each tenth-grade group there are about 40 students, it is 320 students in all. The ages vary from 15 to 18 years, the English level is low, A1 taking into account the European Reference Framework. They study four hours of English a week, and came from ninth grade in which they had only 3 hours a week, so, the time to study English is not enough. Taking about the Step 1 of the suggested material, we would like to keep the warming-up stage (activity #1) which is about identifying the musical instruments. Before continuing with the activities 2, 3 and 4, which are questions directed by the teacher, we consider important to include pronunciation marks to help students to get familiarized with the English sounds, not only with the written form.As we mentioned above, our students’ level is very low and the lack of time are factors that required more attention.
At the same time, our students prefer pronunciation practice through eliciting, repetition and drilling because they feel confident when talking efficiently. After answering the questions already mentioned, activity 6 should be done in pairs in order to re-create a dialog mode through the survey presented, this adaptation corresponds to facilitate, not only the interaction among students, but also the teacher –time control: the time class is short and the quantity of students in a classroom is higher than expected. The ending of this part, which is about showing the main features of some instruments, we really need to modify it: we prefer to set this task as extra-class and in groups.Again, the lack of time class and the number of students require finding out different spaces to work: that is why we have been implementing Tics and interdisciplinary ´strategies to take advantage of their time at home and in other spaces like Technology and Music classes.
For instance, this year we have worked with the website Edmodo, which is an academic network similar to Facebook: there we not only set the tasks but also the students can upload their homework, documents, etc. So the dynamic of this part is the following: After dividing the class in eight groups, each one will be in charge of a musical instrument to work on. In Music class, they will look for useful information about and in Technology class, they will design an audiovisual presentation (using software like Power Point, Prezi, Audacity, etc) to upload to Edmodo. There, the entire group can see the presentations, give a grade and, at the end they will have to do an online quiz.
