EXPRESSART : A Project-Based Language Learning Experience

This article aims to compare two different methodologies (implemented by a single teacher in an practitioner research approach) used in a 4th year English classroom in a public primary school in Catalonia. To do this comparison, different outcomes from students were collected and analysed to answer different questions related to Project Based Language Learning approach (PBLL) and what the author calls Course-Book Driven approach (CBD). The article examines, through the analysis of the students’ productions and of the focus group, the evidence of gains in written language and the motivation of the students depending on the approach used. The article concludes with several implications for research and practice.


Introduction
In this article, two different professional approaches, as applied personally by this researcher, to language teaching are compared (approach 1 is what the researcher has called 'Course-Book Driven' (or CBD approach) and approach 2 is Project Based Language Learning (or PBLL), see (Beckett & Miller, 2006).These professional approaches are based in a practitioner research (Kara, 2012;Allwright, 2003) (herein PR) that looks at the researcher's own teaching practice from a socio-constructivist perspective (the notion that knowledge is a shared creation that takes place through interaction; cf.Lantolf, 2000Lantolf, , 2004;;Lantolf & Poehner, 2008;Vygotsky, 1978).
CBD is what this researcher defines as using textbooks to teach English as a foreign language in a more, for lack of a better term, 'conventional' way.That implies following quite strictly the organization of lessons according to a "Pupil's book" and an "Activity book" and the activities proposed.It is recognized that even though the authors and publishers of such books have endeavoured to ensure that the reading, writing, speaking and listening activities are related to the students' interests (school subjects, animals, computers, etc.), it still must be acknowledged that these topics and subsequent proposed activities are not necessarily meaningful in the sense that they are not chosen by the students.Furthermore, coursebooks, by nature, must be generic enough to sell worldwide.
PBLL is understood in this context as assignments, tasks and activities that segue into a main output and which help the students work on different competences simultaneously (e.g.designing, planning and setting up an artwork production).These activities revolve around different learning aims (e.g.understanding architectural and engineering techniques as in the previous example) while integrating other skills (e.g.learning to negotiate, make compromises and collaborate).
With these two approaches in mind, this study aims to study which methods can be be optimized to ensure language learning in foreign language classrooms, this study takes an introspective look at teaching practices, with an aim to innovate and renew teaching and learning processes in the language classroom, based on sociocultural premises that bring the importance of interaction to the fore.It is necessary to reconceptualize language, context, and learning in profound ways if we wish to reap the benefits of the visions presented at the beginning of the beginning of the 20th century by Bakhtin, Dewey, Vygotsky, and others, whose message once again become prominent.(Van Lier, 2000, p. 247)

Theoretical framework
This article is based in a practitioner research (herein PR) that looks at this (author) teacherresearcher's teaching practice from a socio-constructivist perspective, placing particular emphasis on the the notion that knowledge is a shared creation that takes place through interaction (Chapman, Ramondt & Smiley, 2005).That premise means that people learn while participating and interacting in social activities with other people (Vygotsky, 1978), in other words, learning takes place through the social interaction with others.Wenger (2015) defends that all learning happens through the interaction of the members of a Community of Practice (CoP), in an environment where the novice members interact with the experts to acquire tools (and skills) to improve their abilities.In this sense, a school can be considered a Community of Practice, and the English classroom or the English lessons are another community of practice inside the school.In this CoP, part of the normative 'rules' is the fact that there is another language that reshapes the rules of language usage.Learning to recognize and use the CoP language is part of becoming a member of the community -members are 'validated' by other members in the main community through their use of that language (Masats, Nussbaum & Unamuno, 2007).So, for example, the communication with the teacher and the classmates in the EFL classroom changes, normally, into English and the linguistic strategies will also be different.The students are aware of the changes and they make decisions on how to behave and interact with other members of the CoP according to the situation.As Negueruela-Azarola, García, and Buescher put it: From an SCT learning and development perspective, classroom behavior that is dynamic and directed to others (interactive) integrates a rich dance of talking, gazing, listening, gesturing, reading, and writing.The assumed main goal for all these different types of interactions is to maximize learning opportunities.(2015, p. 235) The socioconstructivist premise not only informs the teaching that is examined in this study (and the subsequent interventions that form part of the research data), socioconstructivism also provides the theoretical underpinnings of the approach to the qualitative analysis, which is divided into three phases: 1) A secondary research in order to elaborate the initial criteria for the content analysis (Strauss & Corbin, 1990) that is carried out on the written data collected from the students; 2) Data analysis of the content of written output from four students.Grounded theory has been used to analyze student's productions as part of this content analysis of the written texts.In grounded theory, categories are linked and organized according to identified relationships or themes, in a process called axial coding (Glaser, 1978).Finally the third phase 3) is a focus group analysis from the same four students that take part in phase number two.It is important to note that a focus group is not a casual talk but instead it is a planned conversation in order to obtain information from an area of interest in a permissive and relaxed atmosphere (Krueger, 1991).
The principle reason for this comparative analysis of the two approaches is due to the fact that nowadays in Catalunya, education tries to follow the notion of projects as a way of teaching-learning methodology at schools.This implies that the roles of the teachers and the students must change as they adjust to this more interactive approach to teaching and learning.In a project approach, teachers are guides; they are no longer the sole 'holders' of the content knowledge the students may engage in.Students, on the other hand, have more liberty to express their needs and their interests (e.g.student-centred focus).Ideally, they are responsible for their own learning process and the project engages them to develop their skills through carefully designed, integrated tasks (Dooly, 2010;2016).In short, project work can be defined as "long-term, problem-focused, and meaningful activities that bring together ideas and principles from different subject areas or disciplines" (Goodrich, Hatch, Wiatrowski, & Unger, 1995, p. 8).
Corollary to this is the idea that motivation is a very important factor to take into account in this particular type of teaching-learning process.If students are more motivated, perhaps they will be willing to learn more, make bigger efforts, give their opinions, innovate with the language, etc.It has been argued convincingly elsewhere that working through projects can increase students' motivation towards the learning process (Stoller, 2002), including the learning of a foreign language.Indeed, a noticeable swing towards its use has been detected.
In fact, in the past years in English lessons, a change has begun and teachers all over the country are trying to use the PBLL methodology to teach a part of that language in their classrooms.Teachers are not the centre of the learning process anymore.This approach plays a very important role in language teaching because it not only allows for a practical and meaningful approach to teaching and assessing language learning; it also promotes effective learning strategies and critical thinking skills (Dooly, 2013).It has also been pointed out that in the Spanish education system there has still been little research focused on this aspect (Sierra, 2011).This study aims to take a small step in the direction.

Research context
The compilation of the data for the research takes place in a public primary school in the centre of Sabadell (municipal area of Barcelona).The families that bring their children to the school are, in general terms, economically middle class with a high socio-cultural level.On the whole, these families are of the opinion that school is important for their children and they demonstrate support to the school, the teachers and their initiatives.The school is located in a Catalan speaking community and the percentage of immigrants is around 2%.The teacherresearcher has been working at the school for the last four academic years.
In the school there are 18 groups from P-3 through the 6th form with a total number of 450 children.Students are introduced to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) as early as P4 (4 years old) and English lessons continue through all of the grades.In the last two primary grades, apart from the EFL lessons, science is taught in English too.
We are looking at a practitioner-research, thus the study takes place in the researcher's (teacher's) classroom.This means that while the researcher is collecting the data he is also involved with the analyzed group as their teacher (for different discussions of research wherein the teachers takes the role of researchers in their own classroom, see Adelman, 1993;Bartlett & Burton, 2006;Ferrance, 2000;Pine, 2009;Sagor, 2000;Stringer, 2007).
In the group of the study, there are 26 students: 16 girls and 10 boys.Of the entire class of 26, four students (two boys and two girls) were chosen to serve as the focal point for the data compilation (to analyze their writings and to take part in a focus group).They have been chosen for several reasons: a) equitable representation of gender; b) they have always been together at the same school and in the same group since beginning their schooling; c) they are generally quite talkative so it was felt they would be more participative during the focus group; d) they took part in all of the tasks that were analysed.
The students in the class are 10 years old and they are, in general, very motivated for the lessons at school (across different subjects).They enjoy EFL for different reasons such as communicating while travelling abroad (they find it useful because when they travel they can talk with other children) and because we have international projects with schools from different European countries (thus they see its immediate relevancy).They also think that English is an important language if they want to use (and understand) Internet or if they want to know the meaning of their favourite pop songs.

Activity/Activities implemented
Two data sets are used in this research.

Data set 1:Written texts derived from classroom procedures (CBD & PBLL)
The output is: Within the CBD approach, there are two different written texts proposed by the course book (Tiger Tracks, from Macmillan Publishers).'A day at school' was written in November 2013 and 'My favourite book' was written in February 2014.
The classroom procedure with each writing process and product is the following: One session with the full group (1h) is devoted to talking about the topic of the writing task, taking notes and starting the draft.One session with the half group (45 minutes + 45 minutes) is devoted to writing the draft and asking questions to the teacher (the teacher gives feed-back to the students).If a student has not finished the draft, he or she can finish it at home.The teacher takes all the drafts home to correct them and in a session with the half group (45 minutes + 45 minutes) gives them back with individual feedback.Students start the final product (the final text should be without mistakes and be accompanied with drawings).If they do not finish the final output at school, they can finish it at home.Within the PBLL approach, there is an activity in which students write about themselves, about their town and about a personal object (activity carried out in April 2014).This writing was contextualized within an international project in the school (VoiceS project) -the students were writing to their partners in an Austrian school to introduce themselves and describe their town to students and teachers from abroad.
The classroom procedure for the introduction texts is the following: One session with the full group (1h) is devoted to talking about the topics of the writing, taking notes and starting the drafts (they could choose to start by writing about themselves or about their town).Two sessions with the half group (45 minutes + 45 minutes) are devoted to writing the drafts and asking questions to the teacher (the teacher gives feed-back to the students).If a student has not finished the drafts, he or she can finish them at home.The teacher takes all the drafts home to correct them and in a session with the half group (45 minutes + 45 minutes) gives back the drafts with individual feedback.
The students also had to write a text about a personal object that they had created previously in an arts and crafts class.The procedure for this text was one session with the full group (1h and 30 minutes) devoted to creating the object with the art teacher and deciding why they have chosen that object and not another.This was a student initiative as they wanted to create a personal object to add to the poster in order to individually personalize their exchange with the Austrian school.Since the art teacher also wanted to contribute to the project, this was an ideal way to make the language lesson more interdisciplinary.The final step was for the sudents to create the final product (poster, see figure 1), pulling together all the components of the project (texts, drawings, pictures, cardboard, etc.) in a session with the full group (1h).

Data set 2: data from the focus group
The technique for collecting the data in the focus group was recording audio (only).It was not video recorded because the investigator did not want to make the students more timid.
Moreover, because the audio recorder is very similar to a smartphone, it was more familiar to them.The discussion was held in a small classroom in a relaxed atmosphere.The researcher wanted to be with the four students alone, without other people around because he wanted them to feel comfortable to talk therefore arrangements had been made for the rest of the pupils were in a Catalan lesson with another teacher.
Before starting the recording, it was explained to them what they were going to do and that their parents had agreed with the recording.It was also explained to them that the researcher had been looking at their written texts and that he would like to talk about them.
Finally, they were told that it was not an evaluative session -this would not affect their final marks in any way nor any problems with their writing would be pointed out.They were told that the session would be recorded with a digital recorder and that it would help the teacher to complete his research dissertation for a Master's degree (this was explained in terms they could comprehend).The purpose with the focus group was getting information from the students concerning their motivation when working through different methodologies.Some questions were asked such as "Is it relevant for you to write to other students from a different country?" "How do you feel about collaborative learning?""In which kind of writing methodology do you feel safer?"There were also questions related to the more frequent features that emerged from the content analysis of their written output such as "What differences do you see in your writing (showing them examples)?""I think this is more complex because your sentences are compound (you use and, or) or complex -you use because.What do you think?Why do you think you did this?"After asking the questions, the researcher was quiet in order to give them time to elaborate on their comments because their opinions were very useful for the research.
How this data were analysed is explained in more detail in the analysis section below.

Objectives and research questions
As explained in the introduction, two different teaching approaches to language education are compared.After comparing them, some questions were answered, based on the results of the three-phase analysis described previously.
The first question is "Do PBLL and CBD approaches result in different language learning results?"And the second question is "Can PBLL be applied to writing in contexts which are predominantly oral-production focused?"This question needed to be refined, so two sub-questions were added.The first corollary question is "Is there evidence of gains in (written) language use in PBLL-derived output in comparison to the other approach?"This is answered with the data analysis.And the second one is "Are students more motivated when producing output in PBLL situation than in the teacher-centred approach (CBD)?"This is answered with the focus group.

Analysis
Data set 1 analysis Grounded theory has been used to analyze the students' productions as part of the content analysis of the written texts.In grounded theory, categories are linked and organized according to identified relationships or themes, in a process called axial coding (Glaser, 1978).In order to carry out the axial coding, the data information was first transferred to an Excel chart (see figure 1, below).An important part of the writing process is to take notes.This was a feature of the teaching process about how to write in English which was taught explicitly in the class.Thus, from the beginning, students were initiated to the idea that when they write in English it is very useful to write down initial ideas (words, adjectives, connectors, etc.) before trying to craft complete sentences.While in all the PBLL writings students took previous notes (such as words in English, sentences or expressions) before starting to write this did not happen with the CBD writings, two of the four students did not take notes beforehand.Of these two, one of them had to rewrite the entire first draft because the first version made no sense, reinforcing the notion that taking notes is very important before writing because it provides them with a guide.This aspect of their writing process was included in the data analysis as a possible indicator of engagement in the writing task.
Another indicator of the students' engagement in the writing task is a quantitative approach of counting the number of words written by the students.In this aspect, there was a big difference between the writings produced within the two approaches.As indicated in the description of the activities, the students decided to write about different things to introduce themselves to students from their partner country and between the writing tasks the amount of words is significantly different.In the CBD output they wrote an average of 69,3 words while in the PBLL they wrote an average of 116,3 words, equal to a 59% increase in word production.
The notion that students, in general, like to express their opinions when they talk or write was taken into consideration in the analysis.In the CBD writings called "A day at school" and "My favourite book" students expressed what they prefered ten times, using expressions such as "My favourite..." or "I like".In the PBLL writings, they talked about their opinions eight times, using expressions such as "My favourite", "I like" and "I love" but they also explained why (four times) using the connector "because".The use of "because" does not appear in any of the CBD writings.This indicates an attempt at greater complexity in the PBLL texts.
Also, in the PBLL approach writing production, there are several examples of compound and complex sentences.For example, the passive voice can be found in the writing of four students (I was born, a street called).All the students also express their opinions using the expression 'My favourite'.Connections 'and/or' are also used by all the students to link ideas or sentences.In both types of productions contractions such as "I've, We've, I'm, He's" appear.
In texts from both PBLL and CBD two cases of using descriptions can be found.One description is about their favourite character in the CBD productions (about their favorite book).In these texts, the students use an average of 5,75 adjectives per description.The other description is about themselves in the PBLL productions, and in these writings they use an average of 11,75 adjectives.It should be noted that these linguistic features had been discussed in class in both approaches.

'Teacher's perspective' based in output (final products):
Even if the process is the most important part of a school task, the final product is the demonstrable (audience-oriented) what other students and families will see.Incidentally, something very similar to the notetaking before writing took place during the production of the final product: two students did not make a final product in CBD.In that case, they took notes before writing and they also wrote a draft but, in the end, they did not deliver a final product to be corrected and displayed in the classroom whereas, within the PBLL approach, all the students finished their final product.

Data set 2 analysis
The information stemming from the focus group has been significant for the furthering of the research findings.In particular, the information gathered from the students' discussion has been very useful to answer the question "Are students more motivated when producing output in PBLL situation than in teacher-centred approach?"This will be discussed in further detail below.
As in the first data set, grounded theory was also applied in this phase, although in a slightly different way.Grounded theory refers to inductive theorizing that emerges from the corpus of data.It also implies taking a case-oriented perspective, with the assumption that variables of the dataset interact in complex ways (Charmaz, 2005).The basic idea of the grounded theory approach is to read (and re-read) a textual database (such as a corpus of field notes) and to observe the 'emergence' of frequently recurring features of the interaction and then to 'name' these variables (they may be called categories, concepts and properties), as well as noting their interrelationships, especially in terms of micro and macro thematic areas.
The first step in doing so is known as 'open coding', which is the part of the analysis concerned with identifying, naming, categorizing and describing phenomena found in the text.Thus, before analysing the extracts, a category analysis has been done.In this analysis there is a 'macro' thematic area, labelled motivation.In this thematic area, different categories can be found according to the information given by the four students who made up the focus group.The categories are 'safety', 'public display', 'foreign knowledge', 'other subjects involved', 'giving opinion', 'amount of writing', 'effort', 'innovation' and 'other'.In the first analysis, in which the macro-themes were drawn out, these categories occurred recurrently during the focus group discussion in different moments.They were mentioned by all the students separately.These topics were interpreted as being linked to the concept of 'motivation' (or being more engaged) and were called 'sub-topics'.The frequency of the subtopics that emerged from the data were then counted:  Safety (9 comments)  Public display (7 comments)  Foreign knowledge (6 comments)  Other subjects involved (6 comments)  Giving opinion (4 comments)  Amount of writing (4 comments) The following chart demonstrates the relationships between the categories and the comments produced by the students during the focus group.These categories and comments are discussed in more detail below.

Other subjects involved (ART)
L: Era la cartolina, amb el "my self, el ",my favourite object", el my city" i el nom.

Giving opinion
Amount of writing M: En VoiceS es veu a simple vista que és molt més llarg i pots donar la teva opinió.En canvi al llibre no et deixen espai per fer-ho.

Amount of writing
Giving opinion M: En VoiceS es veu a simple vista que és molt més llarg i pots donar la teva opinió.En canvi al llibre no et deixen espai per fer-ho.
Amount of writing P: En el projecte es veu clarament que és tot un text i hi ha molta lletra.En canvi en el llibre són frases i no és tanta lletra.

Effort
Better writing L: Com ha dit el M. En el VoiceS ens esforcem més, fem millor lletra.En el llibre no et pots expressar tant bé.

Other
This consists of ensuring that all concepts that have emerged can be substantiated from the data.In this case, this has been done through qualitative content analysis of the focus group discussion (Mayring, 2000).This offers the opportunity to compare and complement the categories with sources from the primary data (Kohlbacher, 2005).For the sake of brevity only one detailed analysis is discussed here, however, in the full study each category is deglossed in the same manner.The example given here deals with the category 'safey' which was the most salient for the focus group participants (as determined by holding the highest frequency).The discussion took place in Catalan, to facilitate the participation of the young language learners.The fragment in its original version can be viewed in the annex.
Fragment 1: 'safety'.Participants: I (investigator), A (student A), L (student L), M (student M) and P (student P).As it can be seen in this short fragment, the feelings about which approach to language teaching makes them feel more confident is evenly divided.On the one hand, two of the students feel safer (more secure, more confident) when they work following a CBD methodology because they are afraid of making mistakes when their output is shown to the rest of the school or sent to foreign students.In turn 23, student L says "I feel safer with the book".She had already indicated that sometimes she was afraid of making mistakes (turn 12): Sometimes I'm afraid of 'flubbing it'.She agrees with student A when she says, "I also feel more secure, like A. Because, I don't know, with VoiceS [EU project] I don't want to 'flub it up' because I do care what others think".Also in turn 20, student L says she feels safer in a quiet atmosphere because she can concentrate better.
In turn 15, student A feels safer when her productions are not publicly displayed: "I feel safer with the book because with the projects or it gets sent to another country or else they hang it at the entrance of the school and other people see it ... If you get something wrong it's ...".In turn 25, this same student reiterates that she feels more confident and secure with the book to do language exercices.
On the other hand, it can also be observed that there are two students who feel safer when they work following a PBLL methodology.Student P, in turn 16, says he feels more comfortable with the project approach and that he prefers noisy classes because he can talk to his mates and ask for opinions and he adds that silence is tedious: "I feel better because with the book there is so much silence, and everyone is working … uff! Boring!"He also says there is more communication in English (turn 18).Student M is not worried about making mistakes, because everybody makes them and "it doesn't matter" (turn 19).This follows the line of thought previously put forth by the teacher-investigator that making mistakes is not a problem (turn 13).Student M alsosays that with PBLL they give more information turn 22).
Finally, in turn 25, student A says that she feels safer writing compositions when doing projects because they have more space.She adds that with the book you have a little space and they cannot write everything they might want."With the book you have just a little space and you can't say everything".

Conclusion
This research has tried to answer different questions.The first question that the teacherresearcher has asked himself is "Do PBLL and CBD approaches result in different language learning?"After analysing the data coming from the students' productions, there is clear evidence of differences between the writings following a CBD approach and the writings following a PBLL approach.The answer, then for this first question is yes.The PBLL approach resulted in texts that had more complexity in syntax, lexicon as well as showing more creative effort to communicate to an 'authentic' audience.
The second question is "Can PBLL be applied to writing in contexts which are predominantly oral-production focused?" again the answer is yes.This second question was then refined with these two extra questions -Is there evidence of gains in (written) language use in PBLL-derived output in comparison to the other approach?and -Are students more motivated when producing output in PBLL situation than in teacher-centred approach (CBD)?
Once more, all the questions are answered with a yes.Even if the oral production is an important part in the teaching-learning process of any language, writing is also an important aspect.And, according to this paper and to the data analysis, PBLL can be applied to writing, even when the classroom procedures highlight oral production more frequently.
In summary, after analysing "data set 1", there is evidence of more gains in the target written language when the PBLL approach is used.For example, students write longer texts, use more adjectives, create complex and compound sentences, use the passive voice, justify why they like something using the connector "because", etc.In addition, when analysing the

Fig. 2 .
Fig. 2. CBD draft: A day at school will usually try to make a bigger effort in this final part because this is

Table 2 .
Relationship between categories and comments from the focus group discussion They say that when we follow the examples the book gives us we are following a model.When do you feel more 'secure' and more relaxed when you are working?When you are working with the book or on the project?Or does one thing have an impact on the other and vice-versa? 15.A: I feel safer with the book because with the projects or it gets sent to another country or else they hang it at the entrance of the school and other people see it ... If you get something wrong it's ... 16.P: I feel more comfortable with the project.I feel better because with the book there is so much silence, and everyone is working … uff! Boring!In contrast with the VoiceS [EU Project] you can ask how it's going, hear the conversations of other people, there is more noise, you can walk around and see how other people's work is going and it is more interesting.Like P said, I also feel more comfortable with VoiceS because if you 'flub it' it doesn't matter.20.L: I also feel more secure, like A. Because, I don't know, with VoiceS I don't want to 'flub it up' because I do care what others think.I like the book more in order to feel safer and it's quieter to concentrate more.I like the VoiceS project for speaking, like P said.21.I: So, if we have to write a text explaining something how you think it would be better?How would you feel safer?22. M: With VoiceS, because it is more complete, you give more information.23.L: A bit with Voices but more with the book, as I said earlier.I feel safer with the book.24.P: Like M says.That way [working with the project] you see the results, you do everything.You do all the texts and everything and then paste it on a poster.You get to see how good it turned out.25.A: Safer with Voices.But to do exercise activities, best with the book.To write texts, best with Voices, you have more space.With the book you have just a little space and you can't say everything.
11. P: We also know if we do a video like the one we were sent from Holland, we can see how they are, what differences they have, how they speak.It is also interesting to know how they write [script].12.L: Like M says, it's good.It's good to know how the school is organized, if wear uniform or not.Sometimes I'm afraid of 'flubbing it.'13.I: If we are wrong, it's not a problem.14.I: Barba Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature.9.4 (Nov-Dec 2016) ISSN 2013-6196 76 19.M: 26.I: When we do project work, everything is a little more free, right?In general what differences do you see with the texts we have done in relation to the book and related to the project?This is what I've really been analyzing a lot.