Why should we use project based learning and task based learning in teaching English?

As we know, everything in the world has to evolve like a nature process. As life in the earth planet, the way to acquire the knowledge must to advance according to the present time. Out of the caverns the world began to change through the time, and the knowledge was transmitted generation to generation by people that we called teachers, so the role of the teachers always has been to look for the better way to transmit their knowledge and guide to the learners to devolve their own capacities in order to practice what they have learned.

We are the new generation of teachers in Colombia and for this reason we are engaged with the learners and their learning. Besides, we have to take into account the present context when we are going to teach in a specific situation, all learning process are not useful for every countries, schools or students, besides the context is not the same that 100 years ago.

When I was studying at the college I found different kind of teachers in that place, most of them were teacher which taught in a traditional way. I remember a special teacher that always was sit down at the corner in front of us; he spoke a lot on his chair and dictated what he wanted we learned. Other teacher wrote on the old blackboard all the time, he walked of imposing form around the classroom asking for the homework or the activity developed in class. Everybody hated those teachers and we felt bored and disappointed in their classes. In that time I thought that teachers had the worst job in the world and for that reason they acted in that manner.

I am not going to talk about my school teachers, but I consider that those examples are a good way to tell that this cannot continue. In my experience like teacher, I have learned more than what I have taught, it does not mean that I am a bad teacher, on the contrary I have been the opportunity to practice with my students everything what my professors in the university have been taught me.

Recently, I discovered two new techniques of learning process which are revolutionizing the learning process in the world since some years, those techniques are task based learning and project based learning. Actually, they are not totally new, the teachers who practiced a task based learning in the past thought in the task like a piece of translation which could help them like a literary source.

Before treating these topics, we need to know what a task is. According to Jane Willis in her book Framework for task based learning a task is an activity “where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome.” It means that the activities in task based learning have to focus in the communicative approaches in which the students are going to develop their skills taking into account their previous knowledge and the purpose that the teacher want to obtain.

In task based learning we can find three stages: The pre-task, where the teacher introduces and defines the topic and the students plan how developing it. The task cycle, in which the students perform the task in pair or small groups and then they present their work and their conclusion to the whole class in spoken or written form. The final stage is the language focus stage, in this stage the feedback of the students and their partners about the development and the conclusion of the task is the main point Willis (1996) said as a conclusion that The main advantages of TBL are that language is used for a genuine purpose meaning that real communication should take place, and that at the stage where the learners are preparing their report for the whole class, they are forced to consider language form in general rather than concentrating on a single form (as in the PPP model). Whereas the aim of the PPP model is to lead from accuracy to fluency, the aim of TBL is to integrate all four skills and to move from fluency to accuracy plus fluency. The range of tasks available (reading texts, listening texts, problem-solving, role-plays, questionnaires, etc) offers a great deal of flexibility in this model and should lead to more motivating activities for the learners. Learners who are used to a more traditional approach based on a grammatical syllabus may find it difficult to come to terms with the apparent randomness of TBL, but if TBL is integrated with a systematic approach to grammar and lexis, the outcome can be a comprehensive, all round approach that can be adapted to meet the needs of all learners.

Project based learning is an excellent way to improve the interest and the motivation of the students in a specific area; they can do that, because they are going to work and develop their project like they want to do it. It is a didactic method in which the students will learn the concepts of a subject through a project; this project could be a problem which is designed, advised and supported by the teacher and developed by the students. The goal of the project is that the students can acquire a particular knowledge while they are developing their own project.

In accordance with Miguel Valero Garcia, professor of Universidad pública de Navarra, the (PBL) project based learning promote the most important skills in the students, such the work in group, the autonomous learning, the planning of the time, the work by projects, the oral and written expression and the student motivation . This is new for us, because we are accustomed to see to the teachers in front of the learning process, they plan the classes, they give to the students the instruction of the activities, they evaluate to the students process and their results, on the other hands are the students, they used to follow the teacher plan and everything that the teacher said, in this case the objective is the teaching. However, in the project based learning the teacher follows the students’ plan and the objective is the learning.
As a conclusion, I am going to quit in this paper some words by Cairlins Morales “the new techniques in education are not further than the evolution in the teaching of education which is used like a tool to facilitate an actual learning”

REFERENCES

Jane Willis, A framework for task-based learning, Longman ELT

Jeremy Harmer, How to teach English, Longman

Jeremy Harmer, The practice of the English language teaching, 3rd edition pp86-88, Longman


ALEX ARTURO DOMINGUEZ CARVAJAL