A Project-based Learning Case Study:Alignment Of Competency Standards And ESP Curriculum

Project Based Learning(PBL)is a teaching method in which students could master key competences by investigating and solving complex problems in today’s world.In this thesis,the writer optimized the school-based PBL framework in an ESP course of a vocational school.Analyzing key elements of learning goals,contexts,tasks and assessments were taking to design the framework.In light of the career characteristics of vocational education,the writer has devised five principles that apply the alignments between learning goals and National Competency Standards,contexts and work environments,tasks and occupational assignments,assessments and job qualifications to the PBL process.Besides,the application of PBL in ESP curriculum focuses on enhancing students’ language skills for future work.Based on the school-based PBL framework,a study was conducted in four steps.The work set out to discuss the prerequisite for project feasibility which hinged on teacher’s efficacy toward creating authentic learning environments and developing learners’ language foundation.Hereafter,cross-discipline Big Ideas-Hotel Housekeeping Management was implemented to the project.Then,students experienced pre-service and in-service training in the school environment that combined with real-world hotel surroundings,activities and worksheets.Finally,a scale was developed to assess the cross-discipline key competences.In this case,the school-based PBL framework has proven fruitful in helping students acquire key competences and improving students’ English listening and speaking skills for real-world working communication.It can be concluded that the school-based PBL framework aiming to align competency standards and ESP curriculum is adoptable by faculty at other vocational schools.Promoting teacher’s professional competency and utilizing available resources to the maximum help to ensure the feasibility of implementing the project.Integrating overall planning and case studies could be advantageous to the ESP curriculum reform in vocational schools.