Effects Of Project-based Learning On Senior High School Students’ English Vocabulary Use And Retention

Based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory,project-based learning(PBL)emphasizes the integration of learning content,life experience,and interpersonal communications.Learners construct knowledge and skills in the process of creating tangible products in groups to solve authentic problems.The General Senior High English Curriculum Standards(2017 Edition,2020 Revised)recommends teachers to organize challenging PBL,activate students’ interests,and encourage students to share personal experiences and products.Despite increasing attempts to apply PBL in English classrooms,most teachers lack systematic knowledge about PBL and doubt its positive effects on students’ performance,especially for those who are at low proficiency level.In response to the official requirements and actual situations,it is necessary to examine the effects of PBL with empirical evidence and provide practical advice for its design and implementation.This research aims to answer the following questions:(1)What are the effects of project-based learning on senior high school students’ English vocabulary use?(2)What are the effects of project-based learning on senior high school students’ English vocabulary retention? It also compares the effects for students of different proficiency levels.The research participants are a class of Grade 10 at T school in Chongqing.Over the 8 weeks of PBL treatments,the students completed six pre-tests and post-tests in the form of Vocabulary Knowledge Scale(VKS).At the end of the project,they also took a speaking test on their vocabulary use.After the experiment,they regularly took six delayed post-tests identical with pre-tests and post-tests,which reflected their vocabulary retention.The results indicate that PBL generally made positive effects on students’ vocabulary use and retention,but the effects are different among the groups.As for vocabulary use,most of the target words appearing in the speech were used with appropriate meaning and correct pronunciation.Students of high proficiency level recalled more target words with a higher degree of appropriateness and correctness while those of low level produced more pronunciation errors,though there exists no significant difference in semantic errors between groups.As regards vocabulary retention,students’ vocabulary knowledge increased significantly through PBL and retained most of it after nearly two months.All three groups made similar achievements in half of the tests but different in the rest tests.In two tests,the group of low proficiency level remembered much less words.According to the results and possible reasons,the researcher suggests the teachers to design PBL with clear objectives on basic language knowledge,including vocabulary.Besides,they can incorporate PBL with the existing curriculum to reduce students’ learning burden.What’s more,they should pay special attention to low-proficiency students and offer sufficient scaffolds.This study not only enriches the empirical research on PBL and vocabulary learning but also provides implications for PBL implementation in senior high schools.