Developing a PBL English Course: a discovery journey

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Developing a PBL English Course a discovery
journey

• Anchalee Chayanuvat
• Institute of Liberal Arts
• Walailak University
• canchale_at_wu.ac.th

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The Context

• Many Thai students at university level do of have
  workable English.
• They have different backgrounds of English in
  terms of their learning experience.
• It is found that most of them do not have the
  skills that enable them to express themselves
  easily in all the four skills, including grammar.

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Evidence from Studies

• English Learning Experiences of Students Enrolled
  at a Thai University (presented at Research in
  ELT, KMIT, 2003)
• Three volunteers experiences (collected in 2003)
• Study of teacher evaluation from students over
  five years (2002-2006)

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Themes from MyThree Studies

• The Teachers Personality
• The Students as Unwilling Self-directed Learners
• Assessment

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Implications from Three Studies

• 1. We need to search for the right approach which
  reduces the impact of the teachers personality
  (the way the teacher is) on the students.
• 2. We need to search for the right approach which
  encourages students to be self-directed and
  life-long learners.
• 3. We need to search for the right approach to
  assessment.

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Objectives of General Education Courses

• Develop a widened outlook of the world.
• Understand nature, self, others and society.
• Have an inquisitive mind and reasoning skills.
• Use languages for effective communication.
• Demonstrate high moral.
• Value art and culture both Thai and
  international.
• Apply knowledge gained in life.
• Lead a proper life in society.

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Why not PBL?

• Learn how to learn (know how they can learn best)
• Develop a lifelong learning approach
• Learn actively
• Practise the following skills
• Communication skills
• Problem analysing skills
• Literature review
• Hypothesizing
• Synthesizing
• Conceptualizing

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PBL can.

• Ideally, PBL can enhance researching skills.
• Confidence to deal with new happenings.

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Course Description

• A practical basic college English course with an
  aim to further develop four essential
  skillslistening, speaking, reading and writing
  training in the use of resources towards
  improving abilities necessary for communicative
  purposes based on selected theme-based materials,
  preparation for authentic academic discourse,
  with grammar and vocabulary development
  exercises.

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Preparation Stage

• Began with syllabus design by analysing the
  course description
• Steps that follows
• Draw the Topic tree with the main
  topicspresented to a small group of teachers
• Changed
• Presented to a bigger group of teachers
• Changed
• Constraints
• Not sure about the content to cover especially
  the
• language areas (no one right answer)
• Must to brave enough to do content selection
• Parallel courses in 12 weeks

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Preparation Stage

• For English, we must have both language
  objectives and content objectives
• Try out the problems to see if they worked
• Recruit facilitators
• Constraints
• Must get the help of non-expert teachers

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Implementation Stage

• Began with timetabling (not easy with parallel
  courses)
• Plan teachers regular meetings to discuss the
  problems or the following weeks work
• (must get good cooperation from others)
• Communication done in various ways
• Memorandum
• Notes
• Calls

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Implementation Stage

• Who will mark homework? (if not planned before)
• How to return and how to give feedback
• The Skills Lab is problematic only two teachers
  ran it (More students than facilitators and
  students wanted the lab to open at other times
  too.)
• How to grade must be decided in advance. Hybrid
  PBL calls for a careful examination of how
  assessment of students performance the course
  should be done.
• Often, as coordinator, I tended to be
  over-ambitious.

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Questionnaire (99 returned)
Least---------------------------------------------
-----------?Most
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PBL and Some English Teaching Approaches

• The Grammar Translation Method
• The Audio-lingual Method
• The Communicative Approach
• The Content-based or the Task-based Approach
• The Learner-centred Approach
• Any pedagogy that puts the learner at the
  centre of his/her own learning is acceptable.
• To produce lifelong learners with their learning
  goals
• and meanings (Nunan 1988 and Tudor 1996)

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How One Learns

• Kolb
• Experiential learningconcrete experience,
  abstract conceptualization,reflective observation
  and active experimentation
• Dickinson
• Personal individual act
• Senge
• To be human

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How One Learns

• Holliday
• Realization of ones capacities
• Hamilton and Khatala
• Permanent change in knowledge and behaviour from
  previous experience
• Ormrod
• Permanent change in knowledge and behaviour in
  thought process

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How One Learns

• Nixon et al
• Interactionexperience at deeper levels of
  understanding and interpretation
• -- Boud and Miller
• Sensing the world through ones experience
• Kahonen
• Reflectionexperience at deeper levels of
  understanding and interpretation
• --Mezirow et al
• Interpretation of ones experience using prior
  interpretation to guide future action

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Questions and Answers
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Thank you for your attention