Implementing Project Work in an ESP classroom

Project work has long been considered an effective medium for incorporating language and content learning and providing a holistic approach to teaching EFL. The use of project work is strongly supported in conceptualizing language teaching because it requires active student involvement, stimulates higher-level thinking skills, and gives students responsibility for their own learning. It includes authentic student collaboration, communication and cooperative learning, promotes interdisciplinarity and focuses on student-centered instruction as opposed to the more prevailing teacher-dominated instruction. The above present sufficient motive for undertaking project work, especially if the instructor aspires to maximize student engagement, to integrate content knowledge and to create some type of natural communicative expansion of the language and grammatical forms taught in previous EFL classes at the Department of Professional Studies. This article will present a small-scale preliminary study of a semester-long process of implementing and developing student projects in English for Specific Purposes class (ESP) in the first year of Specialist (Master) Business Trade study program at the Department. Different stages of the process leading to students' written reports and oral presentations will be outlined including steps to facilitate understanding of the task and interpreting information. The instruments for descriptive data collection were the instructor's observations before, during and after the process, students' written reports and power point presentations that supported the oral presentations, as well as post-activity questionnaire. The results support the rationale for further use of student projects as a valuable complement to the pre-designed syllabus. Finally, some general conclusions of putting project work into practice will be offered.