PROJECT-BASED LEARNING IN AN EFL SETTING – A CASE STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM

Abstract

Teaching for enhanced learning experience has well-received great interest from many teachers and educators around the world. In the EFL setting, tremendous efforts have been recognized in taking students out of a conventional classroom to experience a new way of learning which stimulates interest and creative thinking, which improves communication and collaborative skills, and which exposes students to more meaningful real-life situations. Project-based learning (PBL) is an answer to this, and it has developed as an alternative to teaching a foreign language with a focus on enhanced learning experience and increased creative teambuilding and group skills through meaningful projects. This paper presents how PBL has been adopted at the University of Foreign Language Studies – the University of Danang (UFLS-UD). It revisits the significance of PBL, the structure of a PBL activity, and reports how PBL has been situated in the local context of teaching English to students majoring in English in Vietnam. The reflections reported here showcase the gains through the path of action research enacted by individual teachers who act as change agents or enablers of this innovative teaching and learning approach and whose efforts have been recognized by means of several adaptations made to bring real life and a sense of community into language instruction.