ABSTRACT

Project-based learning has been advocated as an effective means for promoting purposeful language learning for more than three decades (e.g., Fried-Booth 1986; Haines 1989; Legutke and Thomas 1991; McPherron and Randolph 2013; Stoller 2006). It has also been billed as an excellent instructional approach for combining language and content-learning aims, improving students’ literacy and research skills, and engaging students in meaningful service-learning opportunities (Perren et al. 2013). Most support for project-based learning has stemmed from teachers’ anecdotal reports of the successful incorporation of project work into their language classrooms with young, adolescent, and adult learners, as well as classrooms with general, vocational, academic, and specific language aims.

Teachers’ anecdotes, coupled with limited numbers of controlled studies, report numerous benefits of project-based learning for second language (L2) and foreign language (FL) learners. These benefits include improved language skills (including improved reading abilities with informational texts), elaborated content learning, mastery of real-life skills, sustained motivation and engagement, and affirmative self-concepts. These positive outcomes attest to the perceived and documented successes attributed to project-based learning.

In this chapter, I propose to present and elaborate upon a five-step process for integrating project-based learning into language classrooms. The easily adaptable model guides language teachers in planning, implementing, and evaluating project-based learning. To bring the model to life, I will integrate into the chapter real-world examples of projects and tasks that have been successfully integrated into a range of L2 and FL classrooms. This model represents an update in my thinking (e.g., Sheppard and Stoller 1995; Stoller 1997) having observed teachers in L2 and FL contexts work toward integrating project-based learning into their classrooms to achieve language- and content-learning aims.