ABSTRACT
After establishing the potential need for more emphasis on explicit language instruction through PBLL, this chapter describes a heuristic referred to as the Knowledge Framework (KF) and suggests how it can be incorporated into technology-integrated project-based language learning. It bases its suggestions on research data (audiotaped classroom discourse from 10 classes, interviews from 21 students, course syllabi, and student essays) from two semesters of a project-based intensive English exit program at a large midwestern university, a program that prepares students for entry into regular university degree programs. Although the curriculum was not planned using the KF, an examination of the data through this theory shows how the program’s learning objectives, discussions, lectures, and assignments can be described in terms of knowledge structures, thus offering opportunities for instructors to develop and reinforce new, more academic ways for students to construct content through language.
