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Giving a project

The students are not used to writing projects or handling any projects in reading English. However, if they’re going to be studying English on a college level for their profession, they’re going to have no choice but to read articles in English. What better place is there to have a sample project that they’re going to read in their English class?

Some suggestions that I have are as follows: Ask the students to prepare to search for an article on the Internet. In order to do this they’re going to have to learn how to use the regular search engines. In my classes, especially in Special Education and related or allied areas, I refer them to my own listing of articles on a wide range of Special Education topics.

Once they have an idea how to search for the articles in the Internet they can then be asked to choose two or more articles, but never fewer than two, for their project. The articles should somehow be related and they should be reading them with an eye to seeing what similarities or differences there are in the articles. In other words, if one article has a fact which is contradicted in the other article they should be able to read it skillfully enough so that they can handle the discrepancy and report it. They then have a choice of how they’re going to report the articles to their class. In a good class they can report it in English, it can be in simple English which they prepared in advance. They can even get help preparing it. In a weaker class they can present it in their native language. Some of my weaker classes I allow them to speak in Hebrew and in still other classes depending upon the direction of the class and the goals, they can be asked to select the to present the articles in written form. You can also have any combination of these forms. Their summary can then be distributed to the class as well. I like to also ask them to select 7 professional words from the lectures which are also included in their summary and my students are tested on those professional words from the content of the lectures. This way everybody listens very closely, asks questions, and learns the material. The material is always going to be roughly related or basically related to their subject area but on the other hand it’s a new aspect of the subject area studied in greater detail than they would have studied in class since they are reading a new professional article. Everybody gains from this project. They learn new information and new material. They see the value of reading in English because they get new and fresh information that wasn’t part of their classes and everybody in the class advances and progresses in their knowledge of English. When they are asked to lecture in class I try to tell them to try to restrict it to five minutes with a top limit of 10 minutes. In the very first class of the year we decide on the general topics and distribute the topics to the students and we also assign the dates. We do not allow two lectures on the same date. That’s too much for the students to be able to listen to at one time and the students have to be and the students must come on the date of their lecture. There are no acceptable reasons for not showing up. However, if they can the students can come and discuss a possible switch in dates between them. If it is approved by the teacher in advanced. This orderly system has to be strict otherwise all of the students there would be bedlam in the classroom. It is extremely important and this has to be stressed on the very first day. There will always be one or two students who will try to see what they can get away with as far as the date goes and it is very important that those students do not receive the credit for the project because otherwise the others will try the same trick. However, when the students do this you can say that they can prepare a different written project as compensation for partial credit but they will not be able to receive full credit like somebody else did they will not be able to present this to the class and make sure that the partial credit is considerably lower than the amount that the project is worth usually calculate the project as follows: with smaller groups where I have the luxury of two projects per year, each one counts a total of 40% with the first project being worth 15% and the second one worth 25%. In larger classes they can only give one lecture, the point value ranges between 25 and 33% of the final grade which means they understand the importance. I also am prepared when I do this to work with the students privately in order to help them select a topic, research the topic, help them with any questions they have writing it, and they know that I am available by email or telephone in order to handle last minute problems. They usually do not take me up on this offer. They’re embarrassed to work with the teacher so it doesn’t really mean this extra offer is not really over….

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