PROJECT WORK

NAME OF THE PROJECT: DEVELOPING ORAL SKILLS THROUGH PROJECT WORK

TEACHER: CARLOS A. CORREA M.

EDUARDO SANTOS INSTITUTION

LICENCIADOS 3

GROUP: 48

CONTEXT

The Institution is called Eduardo Santos, it has two branches, one is named Pedro j. Gómez, located in Salado neighborhood. The other is named Eduardo Santos, located on 43 street number 120c_77,Eduardo Santos neighborhood, San Javier. The institution vision is to be an educational place where science, pedagogy, social welfare, communitarian projection, and working world are integrated in every moment of the daily life in any institutional activity to promote the development and preservation of life Institutional mission is to give the public -educational service in all levels of the formal education (Kinder garden, Basic, Academic Media and technique) in a continuous process of improvement, promoting the development of candy relationships in accordance with our code of Santista values and the development of the basic, citizen and working competences for what the Santista student falls upon the transformation of their social context positively.
About dress code boys wear a white shirt with the institutional shield in the left side, a blue jean, black shoes, and blue socks. Women wear a green- squared dress, a white-shirt, black shoes, and white socks.  There is also a dress code for physical education.

On the other hand, talking about the students number there are one thousand and nine- hundred students in both branches. I will describe Eduardo Santos section only. It has fourteen classrooms, a play ground in the middle of the institution, there are three floors, two computer rooms, two coordinators, a principal, a cafeteria, a restaurant where students eat or have a glass of milk every day,  it also has a teacher’s room, a library, and a small room for English extracurricular activities. By the way, the institution has several groups like cheers, taekwondo, female soccer team, two-musical groups, a vallenato one and pop music. Besides, in this aspect the institution works with SENA institution on something like PROYECTO DE VIDA, police work on drugs and sexual prevention programs. Students as well as the whole community can participate in the extracurricular activities. Regarding our community relationships I can say they are good. Parents are working people; in many cases students do not have a father or a mother, so students live with grandmother or grandfather sometimes with both of them. Most of the parents are interested in their sons or daughters; in few cases parents do not show any interest. Besides, there is a Parents Council where people belong to it and work a lot for the institution. I think there is a good relationship among parents and all people that work in the high school in a general sense.In the same way, we have good relationships in the institution among teachers themselves and administrators and teachers. Besides, there are four –English teachers in both branches. In the Pedro J. Gómez branch there are two and in the Eduardo Santos two, also.
Talking about all our educational community there is a common rule that is called Manual de Convivencia Escolar Santista.

In these lines I want to refer to students. I teach from 9° to 11° grades. Students are male and female. I can say they have good relationships, although they fight sometimes but it is difficult to have a fight between students from the same classroom. Students from Eduardo Santos Institution are from 1,2 and,3 strata mainly. There are more students from 1and 2 strata than from 3 one. Students come from different neighborhoods surrounding the school. These neighborhoods are El Salado, La Loma, Guadarrama, La Caseta, principally. The students interests are different  dancing, music, and technology are the most important things for them because I can see they enjoy these activities, they want to belong to these groups, train almost every day, and get early to the activities or performance they have to show. Regarding English interest few students have shown a real interest in this subject but I can say it has increased the number of students who want to learn English. For example in the survey I did in 9°1 and 9°2 grades students’ answers were affirmative to the question about if they wanted to learn English. The answer to the question about how do they want to learn English? Their answers pointed out in a communicative way, I mean, to speak and understand what other people speak.

Finally I will refer to English – syllabus in my school. We have worked on it two years ago trying to get a communicative approach syllabus, and we are working on it right now since the syllabus did not exist before and the classes were taught based on grammar focus only. To build the nowadays syllabus we, the English teachers of the institution held different meetings where analyzed the curricula parameters, the standards of the National Educational Ministry, discussed about it, and decided how to build the syllabus but with us there is a coordinator who managed the meeting and listened to our points of view. Right now, by these days we are analyzing the syllabus to correct anything if it is necessary. Any way we try to build the syllabus together including teachers of primary school in order to give continuity to our syllabus from kinder garden to 11° grade with a communicative tendency.

MAIN OBJECTIVE: To enhance students’ oral skills through project work

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:

*To negotiate topics, subtopics, and final products with students.

*To design activities corresponding to students’ needs.

*To promote student-student interaction developing class activities that allows it.

*To create a Conversation Club as an extracurricular activity like a complement of
the project work in class room.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Based on “ PROMOTING AND IMPROVING ENGLISH ORAL PRODUCTION IN HIGH SCHOOL EFL STUDENTS THROUGH COMMUNICATIVE TASKS “ , 2009, Medellín, the project work of Carlos Mario Giraldo Cuartas,  student of School of Languages from Universidad de Antioquia, he established a comment about English in our country saying that “ In Colombia,  where English is a foreign language and  is not used as a means of communication in society, especially when it comes to English classes at school, it happens that not many students are motivated to speak English due to the questioned usefulness to it. Given that for most Colombian students, learning English is an imposition, students do not really want to learn it inside or outside the class rooms. Teachers try to modify this by using traditional methods such as written translations, and long textual grammar in the mother tongue (Brown, 2000), and isolated word lists and, although these methods are helpful, they do not promote suitable motivation to speak English in class neither do they help develop a student´s communicative ability in the target language (Brown, 2000, page 16).

According to the project work “ENHANCING SPONTANEOUS ORAL PRODUCTION THROUGH PROJECT WORK SUPPORTED BY TASKS IN A GRADE 9 EFL CLASS ROOM “, March, 2008 carried out by Cristian David Londoño Arroyave, a School of Languages student from Universidad de Antioquia, in the research this man gives some interesting ideas. For example, he says that “ A project work is an exploitable methodology to give students opportunities to use English freely, and control of their own learning process.” On the other hand, Nunan, says that spontaneous oral production could be enhancing by tasks, interacting the target language (1998: 10). In this sense, it is important to note some expression to take in account when talking about oral skills in the class room. One of this is negotiated, another is free and spontaneous speaking, and the last, for now is interactive. These words refer to a development work on oral skills important to get the planned objectives.

Creative thinking activities are other important word in this project. Jorge Arley Carmona Molina, School of Languages student, from Universidad de Antioquia, in his project work “INCREASING EFL GRADE 7 STUDENTS’ ORAL PRODUCTION WITH CREATIVE THINKING ACTIVITIES “ . The point here, first of all, is to take in account students’ interests which allow students participate and speak by using their own ideas by means of creative thinking activities. In thise way students oral production surely increases.

From the text “METHODOLOGY IN LANGUAGE TEACHING “, chapter 12, Conversational English: An Interactive, Collaborative, and Reflective Approach by Wai King Tsang and Matilda Wong, I got the following ideas:

In the first place, the authors say that “Conversations begin with greetings and progress through various ordered moves: the speaker’s and hearer’s roles are ascertained, topics are introduced, rights to talk are assumed, new topics are raised, and the appropriate time, the conversation is terminated in a suitable manner” (Richards, 1983, p, 45).

In the second one, the authors refer to traditional conversation class and establish some features to avoid, precisely, traditional strategies in a conversation class. The following are the features:

*Brainstorming vocabulary with the learners as a source of input.

*Using conversation starters, which are statements expressing an opinion, making a suggestion, or describing a fact, to trigger realistic communication.

*Videotaping students’ conversational practices in the teacher’s absence from the conversation to minimize threat, and to maximize learner participation.

*Reviewing tapes for intensive self-and peer feedback, involving the learner actively in the learning process.

This program reflects an interactive strategy since it allows free conversation with the aid of starters and a working vocabulary; there is a collaborative work between the teacher and the learners in developing sources of input, and between the individual learners in providing feedback to each other. It also encourages reflective learning through having the students fill out worksheets for self-and peer feedback.

STARTING POINT: Students from Eduardo Santos Institution do not hold a conversation in English language when they finish their high school.

In this sense, nowadays it is a social need according to the globalization to develop oral skills in our students so that they got a competent fluency and could understand and be understood when they talked to other English native speakers.

The project work referring here, has like a specific function to solve a clear weakness I observed since I arrived to the institution. I want students to develop the abilities to communicate in an oral way, so that they share with their partners about negotiated topics, using spontaneous and free English speaking through interactive relationships inside and outside classroom. For this reason it is necessary to state a curricular and extracurricular action developing this project in the class room English classes as a response to students’ needs according to their answers in the written survey.

I designed a survey that was applied in grades 9.1 and 9.2 on October 22nd.

Twenty-five students from grade 9.1 and thirty from grade 9.1 answered the following four questions:

1. Do you think English is important for your life?

2. Would you like to learn English?

3. What kind of English topics would you like to learn?

4. What kind of activities would you like to do in the English classes?

The graphic shows the students’ responses for the first-two questions. In the questions number 3 and 4 students gave several answers that helped me to define topics and activities.