Daniel Vincent has taught English for over fifteen years in the UK, Japan and Spain. He has experience in materials and course development and is currently working as a teacher and coordinator for the British Council in Madrid. He is also currently working on authoring a new teens course for Cambridge University Press. In this 3rd blog of the series, Teens Together, Dan looks at overcoming problems with project work.
So far in this series of blog posts, we’ve been examining the whys and wherefores of collaborative project work with teenagers. We have looked at several concrete examples of projects that work in class. Some of you may even have had your students record the pilot episodes I recommended, compiled the infographics or even built the towers I talked about (I hope so!). Today, we’re going to consider some of the issues that can come up when doing project work of this nature, and will look at ways to either forestall those issues or deal with them once they arise.
1. Students not doing the project in English
Those of you who teach in a monolingual setting will no doubt have run up against the issue of students using their first language rather than English in class. Doubtless, too, you will have your own policies on how acceptable this is and on how you ensure the maximum use of English instead.
Ideally, when it comes to collaborative project work, the students should do everything in English, as the process itself is more important than the output. In order for them to do this, you need to ensure two things; firstly, that they have the language they need to collaborate. In the last blog post, we looked at some examples of this. It’s worth looking again at these:
Brainstorming
- I know!
- Why don’t we… ? / How about… ?
- I’ve got a good idea!
- I think… would be better because…
- That’s a good idea, but…
Decision-making
- Yuki, what do you think?
- Mario, would you like to say something?
- Does anyone have any other ideas?
- OK, do we all agree?
- Shall we vote?
Working on something
- First/Next, I think we should…
- It would be better if we…
- That’s not going to work.
- Why don’t we… instead?
- Let’s try (this).
- Don’t forget we’ve got to..
- We still have to…
Secondly, students will also need an incentive to use that language. One way to achieve this is to tell them that when it comes to presenting their finished project – be it a recorded play, an infographic, or a tower – each member of the group will have to say what English they used during the project. You can give each student a checklist for this purpose so that they have the language to hand and are able to keep track of what they use.
I’ve also found that with some groups it works to appoint a ‘language monitor’ – one student in the group whose responsibility it is to make sure the others are speaking English. Some students really love this role. It can also help to include some kind of penalty for use of their first language. For example, you can establish at the outset that marks will be given out of, say 20, for the project, but that groups will lose a point each time they speak (or one of the members speaks) an unreasonable amount of the first language. This helps focus them on the importance of working in English as well as producing something in English.
2. Some students dominating, others not pulling their weight
It’s inevitable that some members of a project will work harder than others. However, you can minimise the risk of one or two students taking over or others failing to participate by ensuring that there are not more students in a group than there are roles in the project.
If, for example, you’re setting up the project for students to record pilot episodes of new series (see the previous blog post), and you decide that four or five is the maximum number of characters each episode needs, don’t make groups of seven or eight students. By doing this, someone will inevitably get left out.
Similarly, it won’t take more than a small number of students to complete the infographic project, illustrating the results of a class survey about social media use. Make sure roles are divided up so that everyone has something to do at each stage of the project. If a class survey project involves a question-writing stage, then an interview stage, then a final stage when the results are written up, don’t let individuals take responsibility for particular stages. Ensure no one is excluded and they are all doing something during each stage.
Bear in mind, also, that some students may not be as enthusiastic about this kind of project-work as others, and may avoid participating not out of laziness or a lack of a role, but simply because they prefer to work alone. You still need to include such students, but try to accommodate them by giving them a role which is important but does not require the same degree of interaction as the others. This could be the timekeeper’s role; the person who keeps track of the time and makes sure the others are working to schedule. You can input some language especially for them:
- How are you getting on?
- You/We have only got …. left.
- You/We need to work (a bit) faster.
- How much longer do you think you/we need?
- Perhaps you/we should start -ing…
3. Groups finishing at different times
One way to avoid this is by giving the class somewhat less time to complete the project than you think they will actually need. Not only does this add a sense of urgency to proceedings and keep the students on their toes, it’s also easier for the teacher to add extra time to a project than to cut it short.
Where groups do finish earlier than others, they can use the time productively by preparing and practising how they are going to present their project output. How did they plan it? Who did what? What English did they use? What did they find easy and what did they find challenging?
Be clear about what you are doing and why
Finally, one of the most important things to remember when setting up and carrying out collaborative projects, and something that will help you tackle many of the issues that might arise, is to make it clear from the outset exactly why you are doing the project.
Students need to know that they are going to be developing skills such as brainstorming, planning and decision-making. They need to know that they will be practising and improving their English by doing so. And they need to know that the point of building a tower is not the tower itself but the planning and the building.
The point of recording a pilot episode is not the final recording but the group creativity and written work that will get them there. With this in mind, always ask students to reflect on how well they think they achieved these things. And when marketing project work, make sure you give marks for the process as well as the output. That’s all for today. For the final blog in this series, we’re going to look at some more examples of collaborative projects that can work in class. Until then, get collaborating!
Read Dan’s first blog post in the series: Teen’s Together #1: Collaborative project work.