ELT News Think Tank

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | George
Date: February 2003

Topic: "What role can collaboration and project work play in language classes?"

Chuck Sandy

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As an author of educational materials, this presents quite a challenge, for it's quite difficult to prepare materials for a wide audience once you give up the idea of correct methodology. As a teacher, though, it presents wonderful opportunities to explore the possibilities of project work and collaboration in a particular class, and for the past year, this is exactly what I've been doing, both with some tremendous success and outstanding failure.

Though I shouldn't tell you this, I've, for the moment, abandoned textbooks altogether and gone to a university semester built around three distinct content-rich themes. Each thematic area is explored for approximately four weeks, and culminates with the completion and presentation of a project.

“It was very messy, and caused me to have to change tracks any number of times, but I've never had more fun as a teacher.”

To give you an example, for incoming freshmen the first theme was "university life" and was built around the language of class, departments, majors, facilities, and activities. Materials included the university's own English language promotional materials and website, along with the online materials put together by other universities around the world. The final goal of the four weeks was to have each student choose one department, facility, or campus activity, research it, write about it, create a poster explaining it, and then present it to the class.

My co-author and mentor, Jack Richards, once said that in any teaching situation or with any materials development problem, you start with the end result -- the place where you want students to wind up -- and then work backwards from there, working out the steps and the language the students will need. In this case, I worked out the vocabulary and grammar needed to talk about majors and so on, thought up ways to help them do internet research in English, designed little graphic organizers on which students could list and compile the information they were gathering, had students do any number of informal presentations in groups, and spent several classes just helping out in a ‘workshop' sort of environment. It was very messy, and caused me to have to change tracks any number of times, but I've never had more fun as a teacher.

In the course of four weeks, students learned quite a lot in various ways, produced several short written drafts on their chosen area, practiced presentation skills, and in class designed and produced an informational poster while I walked around helping as I could, modelling where possible by creating a poster of my own - a participant guide.

With an idea I co-opted from the teachers at Nagoya International School I then organized a presentation day, set up so that the class of 24 was divided into three groups of eight - A, B, C. Group A got their posters, spread out along the walls of the classroom, and got ready to present to groups B and C. Groups B and C, armed with simple feedback sheets I'd designed - with space for 16 names and ratings from 1 to 5 on research, poster presentation, oral presentation and an additional column for comments - circulated around the room, stopping in small groups to listen to a classmates presentation. Groups B and C continued like this until they'd all heard all the presentations, then the groups changed places. Group A got to be the listeners along with group C, while B gave their presentations, and so on.

I present this in detail here because it was wonderful. Each student needed to present five to six or more times. Everyone took the evaluations quite seriously, and the model we developed here became the way feedback, evaluation, and eventually grades were given and worked out over the course of the semester and then the year. Though students worked alone on their projects, they collaborated on giving each other feedback and on evaluating each other's work. Through this, they also became aware in their subsequent project work, of what goes into a good informational poster and presentation and were able to informally collaborate by offering advice and direction as they worked in class.

By the end of the year, they became so good at this and so accurate that I felt no need to give my own feedback and evaluation any greater weight than theirs and in fact in many cases, came to see that their feedback as a group was perhaps even more accurate and on target than my own.

This was one of the great successes and I should point out that the students I worked with in two classes in fact were very average and consisted of those in the top class and the bottom class - in terms of TOEIC scores and entrance interviews. It's interesting to note that students in both the top and bottom class ended up producing work of almost the same good quality - another success.

The outstanding failures I spoke of and experienced invariably occurred when I arrived late and clueless, when I pushed too hard in one direction without taking the temperature of the room, when I showed up with a great idea that wasn't, or when I tried due to mood or predilection to take control - basically when I reverted to being a teacher.

We went on in that class to do thematic explorations of art and artists, and then finished the year with a biography unit in which each student researched the life of a famous person from art or literature, prepared written drafts and a poster written in the first person, then on presentation day became that person - not Hirotoshi doing a presentation on Oscar Wilde, but Hirotoshi playing the role of Oscar Wilde and answering any questions that were asked in the voice of Oscar Wilde. This finally became "Lunch With The Notables" and was presented in the hallways of the school with an open invitation to all faculty and students to come. As you can imagine it was great fun.

Still, I present none of this as a model to follow or the right way to do things, and I'm sure there are those among you who would not approve. There might even be readers who, like my former colleague, think it all amounts to lack of control and foolishness, but I want to tell you this:

There's a joy in learning that comes with relinquishing control, and there's the possibility of discovering what it means to be a teacher/learner when you admit to yourself that you don't have the answers. More to the point, though, in the process of setting learners free on that long tether I've spoken of, in the process of allowing people to collaborate and work on projects and learn in their own way, in this very process of letting go and not pushing you're very likely to discover the great potential not only for learning, but also for joy within your students, and within yourself. My former colleague was dead wrong, and the revolution continues.

Panelists: Marc | Chuck | George

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Chuck Sandy, Chubu University

Co-author of two series from CUP, Passages and Connect

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