Project-based Learning: The Promotion of Communicative Competence and Self-confidence at a State High School in Colombia

Main Article Content

Tatiana Becerra-Posada
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3156-6907
Paula García-Montes
Anamaría Sagre-Barbosa
María Isabel Carcamo-Espitia
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6683-1569
Jose David Herazo-Rivera

Abstract

Project-based learning is a student-centered methodological approach that involves communication, cooperation, and autonomy. Even though project-based learning has been largely explored in foreign language teaching, little is known about its implementation in second-language beginner levels. This action research study describes the use of project-based learning by a pre-service teacher in a group of EFL eighth-graders at a secondary state school in Cordoba, Colombia. Data sources include video classroom observations, students’ focus interviews and students’ diaries. Findings reveal the affordances that project-based learning have in the development of the students’ communicative competence, highlighting the strategies that they use to communicate and the way they construct confidence when planning and reporting their projects.

Article Details

How to Cite
Becerra-Posada, T. ., García-Montes, P. ., Sagre-Barbosa, A. ., Carcamo-Espitia, M. I. ., & Herazo-Rivera, J. D. . (2022). Project-based Learning: The Promotion of Communicative Competence and Self-confidence at a State High School in Colombia. HOW, 29(2), 13–31. https://doi.org/10.19183/how.29.2.560
Section
Research Reports
Author Biographies

Tatiana Becerra-Posada, Universidad de Córdoba

She has been an English teacher for more than ten years at preschool, primary, and secondary levels at private and public schools in Córdoba, Colombia. She is a full-time teacher-educator at the Universidad de Córdoba, where she guides the Language Methods and Practicum courses. She is part of the SIC research group and her research interests are literacy, texts, and genre-based pedagogies.

Paula García-Montes, Universidad de Córdoba

She is an English language teacher at Universidad de Córdoba. She studied a specialized course in language teaching; she holds a master’s degree in education from the Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla. She is a member of the SIC research group at the Universidad de Córdoba. She currently carries out studies with a group of teachers and students, members of the research group SELFinterested in genre-based pedagogy.

Anamaría Sagre-Barbosa, Universidad de Córdoba

She is a full-time teacher-educator at the Universidad de Córdoba, Colombia. She is a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona. She has published mainly in the areas of systemic functional linguistics, discourse analysis, and dynamic assessment.

María Isabel Carcamo-Espitia, Universidad de Córdoba

She holds a B.A. in English Language Teaching from the Universidad de Córdoba, Colombia. She currently is a full-time teacher at a bilingual school in Montería, Colombia.

Jose David Herazo-Rivera, Universidad de Córdoba

He is a full-time educator at the Universidad de Córdoba (Montería, Colombia), where he works as a teacher trainer in the Department of Foreign Languages. His research focuses on classroom discourse and L2 learning, systemic linguistics, L2 education and research, and applications of sociocultural theory to L2 instruction. His most recent research and publications focus on L2 teachers’ praxis of dynamic assessment and implementation of genre-based pedagogy in L2 classrooms.

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