Global Perspectives on Project-Based Language Learning, Teaching, and Assessment Key Approaches, Technology Tools, and Frameworks

34  Chiew Hong Ng et al.
There are 11 studies related to the cognitive and social cognitive theo-

ries of writing. Researchers have used PBL to implement process writing
as a pedagogical approach with examples such as Tessema (2005) who
looked at the engagement of learners in the process of second language
writing; Lowe and Williams (2004), who examined university students’
writing of weblog drafts; and Li’s (2013) collaborative wiki writing
project.

There are six form-related studies involving process writing in which
researchers looked at students’ revisions or editing (peer or self) in terms
of grammar or correct writing conventions in collaborative wiki writ-
ing projects (Boling et al., 2008; Elola & Oskoz, 2010; Li, 2013; Ram-
irez, 2014; Thitivesa, 2014; Ware & O’Dowd, 2008). Ware and O’Dowd
(2008) looked at peer feedback on language form in a telecollaborative
project. There is a study related to function in process writing which
pertains to learning correct referencing writing (Ramachandran, 2004)
and a form-and-function study related to the learning of writing change
functions: adding, expanding, reorganizing, and correcting through wiki
writing (Mak & Coniam, 2008). Out of the remaining four studies, one
is both form and function related and three are related to neither.

There are 23 studies pertaining to writing in PBLL framed along soci-
ocultural dimensions of the constructivist approach and involving col-
laborative writing with dialogic feedback from peers and teachers (Hung,
2011; Hunter, 2011; Ke, 2010; Kovacic, Bubas, & Zlatovic, 2007; Praba
et al., 2018; Tessema, 2005). Beckett’s (2005) project involved a literacy
socialization activity while Wang (2009) engaged in social constructiv-
ism in supporting learning within an information and communications
technology (ICT) project. Many of these were technologically enhanced
projects such as online collaborative PBL (Al-Rawahi  & Al-Mekhlafi,
2015) and collaborative learning projects for digital media (Miller,
2016). Many of the technology enhanced PBL studies utilized collabora-
tive forums, blogs, and wikis (Aydin & Yildiz, 2014; Alyousef & Picard,
2011; Baker & Ismail, 2009; Hunter, 2011; Kessler, 2009; Kessler et al.,
2012; Kuteeva, 2011; Lee & Wang, 2013; Li & Zhu, 2017; Lund, 2008;
Miyazoe & Anderson, 2010; Sun & Chang, 2012; Zorko, 2009).

Although there are 12 studies related to form in the sociocultural
approach, Ke (2010), Kessler (2009), and Kessler et al. (2012) reported
that their subjects were not paying attention to form while engaging
in collaborative projects. Two studies pertaining to function under the
sociocultural approach to writing involved metadiscourse analysis (Aly-
ousef  & Picard, 2011) and the assessment of both rhetorical features
(function) and language accuracy (form) (Li & Zhu, 2017). The remain-
ing nine are neither form nor function related.

However, not all the empirical studies in this review have clearly stated
theoretical frameworks given that 26 of the researchers were more inter-
ested in investigating the concept of PBL, describing PBL projects and the

Researching Project-Based Learning 35
implementation process, detailing project-based instruction (Affandi  &
Sukyadi, 2016), or exploring project-based inquiry process (Spires et al.,
2012). There are also nine studies investigating writing from other theo-
retical perspectives. Seven of the PBL implementation studies were form
related while the functional approach concerned the production of vari-
ous genres such as the cross-curricular story writing project (Pim, 2013)
and the writing of argumentative essays (Affandi & Sukyadi, 2016). The
remaining 16 studies are neither form nor function related.

RQ3: Methodologies Used in Empirical Research on
Technology-Infused Project-Based Language Learning
To address the third research question regarding the methodologies of
empirical research used to study technology-infused PBLL, the 60 stud-
ies were grouped in terms of (1) methods (whether they were quantita-
tive, qualitative, or mixed method) and (2) grade level (see Table  2.2).

Table 2.2  Summary of methodology

Method Grade-level Number of studies

Quantitative 2
1
Surveys Tertiary 4
Achievement tests Tertiary
Surveys and achievement Tertiary 4
8
tests 1
4
Qualitative
1
Descriptive: project Elementary & secondary 4
implementation Tertiary 4
Tertiary 9
Descriptive: project Tertiary 3
implementation 15
Elementary & secondary
Descriptive: instructional Tertiary
treatment Elementary & secondary
Tertiary
Observation, reflective notes,
reflections, interviews,
portfolio, syllabus, lesson
plans

Narrative accounts
Analysis of writing products,

e.g., wikis
Case studies
Case studies

Mixed methods—quantitative and qualitative

Mixed Elementary & secondary
Mixed Tertiary

36  Chiew Hong Ng et al.
Further sub-categories were also created for the quantitative and qualita-
tive methods as well. In terms of the types of research carried out, there
is a great diversity although most of the studies are qualitative or adopt a
mixed method approach. Table 2.2 shows how the quantitative method
mainly involves the use of surveys and achievement tests.

Studies that are quantitative in nature involve students’ question-
naire feedback addressing their views and perspectives about PBL and
its impact on their language learning such as the integrated blog project
of Baker and Ismail (2009). There are quantitative questionnaires about
projects (Kovalyova et  al., 2016); evaluation surveys for wiki-based
activities (Kovacic et al., 2007), and user satisfaction surveys for English
learning systems (Li, 2017). There are also studies involving surveys and
achievement tests and test scores (Thitivesa, 2014; Ke, 2010; Praba et al.,
2018).

Studies that are mainly qualitative involve a diverse range of research
instruments: Beckett’s (2005) interviews and students’ written reflections
for attitude towards PBL, Ponpon’s (2011) semi-structured interviews,
Lotherington et al.’s (2008) narrative accounts by three teachers, Mali’s
(2017) reflective notes about project implementation, Marwan’s (2015)
action research involving observations and interviews, content analysis
by Sun and Chang (2012), and Tessema’s (2005) teacher observations of
the implementation of the projects.

Many of the studies made use of case studies (see Table  2.2). In the
tertiary context, case studies took the form of mixed methods involving
looking at lesson plans, the teachers’ and students’ reflections, research
portfolios, and transcripts of interviews (Beckett & Slater, 2005), or stu-
dent artifacts, field notes, videos recordings, questionnaires, reflections,
and analyses of errors across three drafts (Ramirez, 2014). Other mixed
method studies that are not case studies involved the use of quantitative
instruments such as questionnaires, project scores, attitude scales, and
qualitative instruments such as reflections, vblogs, interviews, chats, peer
feedback, and focused group discussions.

Implications for Future Research and Teaching
The review of the existing literature shows how PBL and specifically
technology-enhanced PBLL has been used to facilitate the acquisition
of language form and function in academic writing by improving gram-
mar, lexical choice, spelling, punctuation, and structural coherence
(see Aydin  & Yildiz, 2014; Grant, 2017; Kovalyova et  al., 2016; Thi-
tivesa, 2014). Technology’s provision of a real-world audience is use-
ful in addressing the functional aspects of writing because it provides a
content in which to teach interpersonal metadiscourse and engagement
markers (Alyousef & Picard, 2011; Kuteeva, 2011). Still “a project-based
language learning focus-on-form approach is in much need of rigorous

Researching Project-Based Learning 37
investigation” (Beckett & Slater, 2018, p. 5). This is because most of the
studies assumed that the implementation of technology-enhanced PBLL
alone is sufficient for the acquisition of form and function (e.g., Fragou-
lis & Tsiplakides, 2009; Woo et al., 2011). To address the teaching and
research gaps, in this concluding section we discuss potential factors that
can target the acquisition of forms and functions in writing so that tech-
nology-infused PBL can achieve optimal efficiency.

Theory-Based Practices for Form and Function
in Academic Writing
Applying writing theories and approaches to technology-infused PBLL
in teaching academic writing and linking writing to form and function
is one possible approach. For example, for the cognitive process theory
of writing, collaborative wiki writing promotes a greater number of peer
corrections (Aydin  & Yildiz, 2014) and more focus on form through
making editing choices (Kessler, 2009; Kessler et  al., 2012; Kuteeva,
2011). In teaching university students academic writing, focus on form
can be through error analysis across drafts (Ramirez, 2014) and a focus
on function for the use of metadiscourse (Alyousef & Picard, 2011).

Balancing Didactic Instruction and
Independent Inquiry
Some form of didactic instruction focusing on form and function could
be incorporated in technology-enhanced PBLL (see Slater, 2020, Chap-
ter 10). Teachers could teach students the functional aspects of academic
writing such as taking on an authorial identity (Sun & Chang, 2012) or
the use of engagement markers in argumentative texts (Kuteeva, 2011).
Students can develop knowledge about form and function prior to doing
collaborative or independent inquiry through practice with target lan-
guage forms in the pre-writing stage. Didactic teaching for the develop-
ment of academic writing ability will mean learners are likely to attend
to form in terms of linguistic accuracy with the provision of pre-task
language support and guided tasks (see Adams & Ross-Feldman, 2008).

Feedback Types
The implementation of technology-infused projects affords students
opportunities to receive and adopt feedback from a wider and more
authentic audience (see Aydin  & Yildiz, 2014; Baker  & Ismail, 2009;
Kuteeva, 2011; Lee  & Wang, 2013; Sun, 2010). For example, Ware
and O’Dowd (2008) looked at peer feedback on language form in a tel-
ecollaboration project. Students’ attention to form in language output
could be due to formative feedback on the appropriateness of language,

38  Chiew Hong Ng et al.
grammatical form, and vocabulary choice improvements (e.g., Grant,
2017). There is a need for more studies related to writing feedback in
PBLL because feedback for error correction has been advocated by many
researchers as an effective means to improve formal aspects of writing
(Bitchener & Knoch, 2010; Van Beuningen, De Jong, & Fuiken, 2012).
Involving corrective feedback during or after PBL helps learners move
from learner error to correct language form (Mohan & Beckett, 2003).
Student training on how to give form-focused feedback to their peers is
necessary, as students sometimes tend to leave form-related issues unad-
dressed if meaning is not impeded in PBLL (Kessler, 2009: Yang & Meng,
2013).

Assessing Students and Evaluating Projects
Writing as summative assessment in PBLL can be through writing tests
(see Affandi & Sukyadi, 2016) or final group projects and presentations
(see Mărculescu, 2015; Smith  & Thondhlana, 2015). The focus is on
form when the written assignments are evaluated for structure, con-
tent, and accuracy (Kuteeva, 2011). In PBLL, the assessment of learn-
ing can be an ongoing, varied, and frequent process involving teacher
assessment, peer assessment, self-assessment to improve students’ writ-
ing proficiency (Mazloomi & Khabiri, 2018; Nguyen, 2011), or written
reflections as self-assessment and peer assessment (Ke, 2010). Instructors
can strengthen project planning and pre-assessment instruction by shar-
ing learning goals with students and aligning assessment with learning
through feedback forms (Lee & Coniam, 2013).

Utilizing Technological Resources for Technology-Infused
Project-Based Learning
Instructors need to understand how to use technology for PBLL to enable
students to focus on form and function in academic writing, as the choice
of suitability of the learning platform is dependent upon whether the
focus is on form or function, both or neither. Instructors need to make
efficient use of the technological affordances and make informed choices
in exploring learning systems, computer-mediated and web-based learn-
ing using text-based tools (e.g., wiki, blog, and forum), and social net-
working sites (e.g., Twitter and Facebook) for writing instruction.

Collaborative wiki writing projects can encourage students to write
beyond the usual word limit (see Mak & Coniam, 2008) or pay attention
to grammar, lexical choice, and structural coherence for form-focused
PBLL (see Kuteeva, 2011; Lee  & Wang, 2013). Researchers can also
develop online platforms such as Chang and Schallert’s (2005) wiki plat-
form for peer-reviewing and Link Grammar for automatic checking of
mechanical errors.

Researching Project-Based Learning 39

The factors we have offered here are not intended to be all-inclusive. In
the design and implementation of technology-infused PBL in the teaching
of academic writing, other more macro-level factors also need to be taken
into consideration. Such factors could include the social-cultural context
of the classroom and the availability of technology as well as institutional
policies and requirements.

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Part II

Empirical Research on
Technology-Mediated
PBLL



3 Translanguaging in Project-
Based Language Learning

James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu

Introduction
The benefits of project-based language learning (PBLL) have been well
documented (Stoller, 2012). In particular, PBLL activities are thought
to provoke authentic and purposeful language practice. For this reason,
it is necessary to consider what “authentic” language practice means.
In their discussion about the challenges of conducting PBLL courses,
Ford and Kluge (2015) identified students’ use of their first language
as a major limitation. The implication appears to be that authentic for-
eign language practice should be only in the target language. Yet this
basic position has been questioned in recent years (e.g., Garcia & Wei,
2014) with compelling reasons. Firstly, that every English as a foreign
language (EFL) or English as a second language (ESL) student in the
world is ultimately learning to, at least, be bilingual is the definition
of a rhetorical tautology. This means that bilingualism in English and
another language is the end goal of the teaching English to speakers
of other languages (TESOL) project, not monolingual-like competence
in English. As such, the use of the first and second language together
may in fact accurately represent authentic language use. Nevertheless,
the teaching and learning practices needed to develop competent multi-
lingual (hereafter “bilingual”) language users are an underreported area
within the field.

Secondly, Foster (2009) makes the compelling argument that map-
ping a direct, explicit relationship between the outcomes of learning
approaches such as PBLL and second language acquisition (SLA) is prob-
lematic in part because it is difficult to isolate the language used by all
participants in a PBLL class. In fact, while the flexibility and student-
centeredness of PBLL make it attractive to teachers (Beckett, 2002), these
very same attributes can make learning outcomes difficult to measure
psychometrically. Conventional wisdom within the TESOL community
might justifiably ask whether there is any point to PBLL classes, if nei-
ther target-language-only practice nor measurable SLA constructs are
present. Answering this question requires redefining not only “authentic

50  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
language-use” but also re-examining the analytical tools used to evaluate
the effectiveness of language teaching methods.

The Analytical Tools of Ecological Psychology
Sociocognitive theories of language and learning have questioned one of
the basic notions of cognitive psychology, namely that language happens
“in the head” (e.g., Thibault, 2011). The particular theoretical perspec-
tive relevant to the present study is that of ecological psychology. Leo
van Lier (2004) is generally credited as the first scholar to use ecological
psychology to make sense of second language phenomena. At the core of
his argument, van Lier proposed that our bodies and our shared cultural
history and context are as much a part of learning and using language as
the brain. This perspective assumes that language is part of the relation-
ship between people and their environment. In other words, a variety
of intersecting timescales influence EFL and ESL classrooms beyond the
simple binary of, for example, comprehensible input and pushed output.
For this reason, van Lier proposed replacing the terms “input” and “out-
put” with the term “affordance.” Chemero (2003) defined affordances
as the relations between the abilities of organisms in the environment
and features of the environment. Abilities, under this definition, are func-
tional properties of an organism that are subject to variation. A speaker
may have a high degree of proficiency in a second language, but his or
her ability to use the language can still vary depending on the situation.
In contrast, features of the environment refer to all of the possible ways
that an individual can act in a situation.

Consider the following scenario from an EFL class at a university in
Japan. A  student drops his or her pen on the floor. That student must
then decide whether to retrieve the pen, or ask a nearby friend to pick it
up. The option to rise from the chair, use his or her native language (i.e.,
Japanese) to ask his or her friend to pick up the pen, or use the target
language of the classroom (i.e., English) all constitute different features
of the environment. However, if the student is not confident about using
English, his or her ability level may not grant access to certain features of
the EFL classroom environment.

The foreign language classroom is unique because students are learn-
ing to act using an incomplete language system. In the Japanese university
example, there would naturally be more affordances in an all-Japanese-
speaking environment than in a foreign-language-dominant environ-
ment. From a sociocultural perspective, this difference could represent
the basic “point” of foreign language instruction. People have an innate
desire to act on the environment using the semiotic tools available to
them. The purpose of the EFL classroom is, from this point of view, to
make English into a semiotic tool with which students can successfully
act upon the features in their environment. Atkinson, Churchill, Nishino,

Translanguaging in PBLL 51
and Okada (2007) define this process of learning to coordinate foreign
language interaction using features of the environment as alignment.
From this perspective, as students receive instruction in and practice their
foreign language more and more, their communicative ability and the
opportunities to act on their environment using that ability will increase.
The number of affordances, in other words, increases.

The theory of affordances is more straightforward than it at first
appears. In a social system, the more actively organisms act in their envi-
ronment, the more affordances there are. The theory is useful here because
it can explain the difference between a classroom full of actively partici-
pating students and another classroom full of students sitting passively.
It must be re-emphasized, however, that affordances do not refer to the
actions of individuals or the features of their environment, but rather to
the relations between individuals and the environment (Chemero, 2003).
As Zheng (2012) observed, affordances are “a way of gaining access both
to the physical world of time, space, and objects, and to the social world
of people” (p.  543). A  group of students working together on a pro-
ject, for example, some sitting and taking notes, others standing near
the board and leading the discussion, suggests a far more complex set of
relationships between the students and their classroom environment than
students sitting alone at their desks completing a handout. The presence
or absence of affordances, in other words, should be easily recognizable
to any experienced teacher.

Redefining Authentic Language Use
This chapter argues that PBLL is attractive to teachers precisely because
of the rich variety of affordances it provides. Returning to Atkinson et
al.’s (2007) concept of alignment previously described, foreign language
learning may be understood as successfully coordinating language ability
with the features available in the environment. PBLL is rich and mean-
ingful as a language learning approach only if the students collaborate
meaningfully throughout the project development process (Tuan  &
Neomy, 2007). Yet the tendency in foreign language instruction to focus
on “target language only” classrooms makes conducting PBLL courses
difficult or untenable in many contexts. Project-based learning in gen-
eral education has been found to (among other benefits) engage students’
critical thinking skills (Thomas, 2000). The process of engaging in an
extended project about a stimulating topic naturally invites a range of
affordances. The research reported in this chapter revolves around the
premise, however, that when PBLL classrooms force the choice between
engaging with the content of the project deeply on the one hand and prac-
ticing the foreign language on the other, the problem observed by Ford
and Kluge (2015) arises: Students begin to speak in their first language. In
other words, by limiting students’ ability to use their first language, PBLL

52  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
courses conducted entirely in the second or foreign language provide a
variety of affordances without giving students the ability to align with
them. Translanguaging may be a way to address this critical mismatch.

Translanguaging as Foreign Language Pedagogy
Translanguaging is a challenge to “target language only” pedagogies
in foreign language classrooms. Garcia and Wei (2014) describe trans-
languaging as “the act of languaging between systems that have been
described as separate, and beyond them” (p. 42). The theory of translan-
guaging takes the concept of affordance a step further by proposing that
a given student’s physical actions, native language use, and target lan-
guage use all constitute different but equally accessible ways of respond-
ing to features in the environment. The theory was first adopted in Welsh
classrooms (Williams, 1996), where students were asked to deliberately
alternate between first and second languages during classroom tasks
(Garcia & Wei, 2014). Velasco and Garcia (2014) found that such con-
trolled use of the first language led to increased performance in second
language writing. A growing research literature in support of bilingual
education has developed the theory of translanguaging further (e.g.,
Khresheh, 2012, Sa’d, Hatam, & Zohre, 2015). Partially in response to
this growing interest, many European countries have developed content
and language integrated learning (CLIL) programs (Garcia & Wei, 2014).
Coyle, Hood, and Marsh (2010) make a strong case for the inclusion
of translanguaging practices within CLIL programs, arguing that these
programs naturally involve aligning with the classroom environment in
different ways in order to understand course content.

PBLL is a natural extension of content-based language learning pro-
grams like CLIL (Stoller, 1997). The study presented in this chapter
assumes that PBLL classes are by nature translanguaging spaces. Gar-
cia and Wei (2014) suggest that “translanguaging space allows multi-
lingual individuals to integrate social spaces (and thus ‘language codes’)
that have been formerly practiced separately in different places” (p. 24).
In her discussion of the theoretical foundation for PBLL, Stoller (2006)
proposed that PBLL provides an authentic context for language usage,
and that this context helps create varied positive experiences using the
language. The present study takes the position that authentic language
use for EFL students is by its very nature multilingual language use and
that the value of integrated teaching practices such as PBLL maximizes
the environmental support structures that facilitate SLA when students’
multilingualism is taken into account. Bilingual PBLL classrooms should
allow students to actively participate in the affordances that the class
offers. In a more recent paper, Atkinson, Churchill, Nishino, and Okada
(2018) define this way of conceptualizing second language learning as the
alignment of language resources with affordances.

Translanguaging in PBLL 53
Based on the previous discussion, this chapter explores translanguag-
ing in a PBLL classroom in Japan, where Japanese students are learn-
ing English by creating a short drama. The guiding research question
asks how students make use of translanguaging in their class project to
achieve alignment with their affordances.

Participants and the Project
The research presented here analyzed the language used by five different
groups of intermediate students working on a student-centered project in
an EFL class at a university in Japan. The class was a required four-skills
course for all first-year students enrolled in the civil engineering program
at this university. The 45-minute class met five days per week. There
were 19 participants in the study, and of these, 11 identified as female,
and 8 identified as male. All participants were 18 to 19 years old at the
time of the study. The students were evaluated at either A2 or B1 on the
common European Framework of Reference for Languages, or between
about 400 and 600 on the Test of English for International Communica-
tion (TOEIC). Students were randomly sorted into five project groups.

The project involved creating a six-minute drama based on a topic
selected by each groups’ members. A full description of this type of pro-
ject may be found in Carpenter (2013). In brief, the project involved five
basic steps, completed over a three-week period: (1) select a story idea,
(2) write the drama script, (3) revise the script, (4) rehearse the drama,
and (5) perform the drama.

The project was built into the course syllabus at the beginning of the
semester, and all participants expected it. When the project began, par-
ticipants were told about the nature of the study and provided with a
consent form translated into Japanese. Students were told that while the
project itself was mandatory for the class, the inclusion of their language
data in the study was not.

The Use of Technology
Siemens and Matheos (2010) proposed that web-based technologies give
students (1) the freedom to create (and re-create) their learning environ-
ment, and (2) more opportunities to interact outside of the physical space
of the campus or the classroom. These opportunities allow contemporary
students to create their own network of web-based resources—reference
websites, online tools, or social networking sites—to enhance the social
as well as the practical aspects of the learning process. Tu (2012) referred
to these networks as a personal learning environment (PLE). While edu-
cational researchers such as Tu have provided a rich synthesis of ways
for educators to make use of PLEs as part of a formal course of study,
the essential point underlying the concept is that contemporary students

54  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
create PLEs whether their instructors are aware of them or not. While
the concept of PLE has not been applied to EFL contexts specifically, it is
anecdotally evident that EFL students make use of a range of computer
applications to support their language learning. During the PBLL class
analyzed in the present study, students were encouraged to make use of
their smartphones during the project development process. This included
making use of the social networking application LINE’s group chat fea-
ture to coordinate class projects with other group members. While ana-
lyzing the specific and probably highly individualized PLEs used by each
of the participants is beyond the scope of this chapter, from the research-
ers’ perspective, the use of technology was as pervasive and natural as
using pencils and paper.

Data Collection
Data were collected on the second day of the project, when partici-
pants began collaborating on their project scripts (step 2 in the project-­
development process previously described). Digital recorders were placed
at the center of each group’s workspace by the researcher. Students were
instructed not to touch or remove the recorders.

Task Description
The translanguaging approach used in this PBLL course was adopted
from Williams (1996) and Garcia and Wei’s (2014) work previously ref-
erenced, and involved deliberately cycling between the use of Japanese
(the first language) and English (the foreign language) while participants
collaborated on their project. The teacher allotted 10 points for each
group, and participants lost points if they lapsed into Japanese during
“English-only time.” English-only time lasted for approximately 3 min-
utes. “Japanese time” lasted for 2 minutes. For this data collection, stu-
dents cycled between English and Japanese six times during the class.
Thus the data collection day produced approximately 30 minutes to stu-
dent collaborative discourse.

Data Analysis
For the conversation analysis, both the English and the Japanese speech
were transcribed and analyzed as a single continuous unit as in Creese
and Blackledge (2010). This transcription method is consistent with the
basic theoretical position of translanguaging previously outlined. Rather
than transcribing the language in chunks according to which language
was spoken, transcribing the language as continuous units helped to high-
light the interconnected functions of both languages in the discourse. As
in Creese and Blackledge (2010), the aim of this analytic method was to

Translanguaging in PBLL 55
highlight the different ways that both languages were used to align with
the content of the task. The audio data were first transcribed using the
simple transcription conventions from Mackey and Gass (2016). As the
goals of the present study were to explicate how translanguaging strate-
gies can be used in a PBLL course, typographic enhancements to indicate
stress or emphasis were not used. Ellipses were used to indicate pauses,
quotes were used to indicate when students were referring to a written
text, and translations of the Japanese speech were written in parenthesis.

The transcribed data were then analyzed using a variation of the pro-
cedure for interpretive analysis described in Hatch (2002). According to
this procedure, the authors kept a research journal and recorded ideas
and impressions from the transcription process in research memos. These
memos and the contents of the research journal were used to develop
salient interpretations. The formation of these interpretations began with
moment-to-moment analysis of the transcriptions in order to code the
data into general categories. To do this, we tried to identify what the
students were or were not doing with regards to the project task itself
(e.g., composing the script, editing, chatting about something else). After
coding the data in terms of these general categories, we then looked for
areas of overlap between the English and Japanese excerpts. These areas
of overlap were then recoded, with the goal of identifying salient units
of participation (Duranti, 1997). These units of participation were then
situated in the research literature previously cited, and within the con-
text of our own professional experience, in order to generate the findings
described in the next section.

Translanguaging in a PBLL Classroom: Findings
Based on this analysis, it was found that students make use of translan-
guaging to align with the affordances of the project development process
in four ways: (1) creating, (2) interacting, (3) reviewing, and (4) repair-
ing. All of these units of participation were underpinned by the students’
use of the PLEs they created using their smartphones. Therefore, while
technology use in and of itself does not qualify as a unit of participation
as defined in this study, the facilitative role that technology played in
allowing students to efficiently align with affordances using both English
and Japanese merits some explanation. Excerpt 1 provides one example
of how technology supported one group’s project development during
“English time.”

Excerpt 1: Use of Technology English Exemplar
(A) Stopwatch.
(B) Yes.
(A) Let’s . . . いい？ . . . let’s start! (Is it okay?)

56  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
(C) はいよ。いいよ。いいよ。(Okay! Fine. Fine.)
(T) Okay! English time.
(D) Okay.
(C) Good morning. B, where is D?
(B) I think I saw . . . her home . . .
(D) Sorry James.
(C) Why were you late?
(D) I got up late.
(C) Don’t be late! And get up early!
(D) Okay, I’ll be careful!
(C) Okay let’s start class. Open the textbook page 90 . . . 75. 90 75?
(B) James, I’m sorry I forgot my textbook at home.
(A) Oh, A. Please show B a textbook.
(A) Okay.
While not immediately clear from reading the transcript itself, student A’s
mention of a “Stopwatch” actually refers to the stopwatch feature on her
smartphone. After the teacher (T) reminded the group that English time
had begun, all of the students in this group turned their attention to a
draft of their drama script displayed on each of their smartphones. This
script was a working document, in the sense that the students continued
to edit it repeatedly throughout both English and Japanese time. Excerpt
2 provides an example of how this group continued to revise the docu-
ment on their smartphones in Japanese.

Excerpt 2: Use of Technology Japanese Exemplar
(A) で5秒後ぐらいにもっかい入って来て (After about 5 seconds, you

enter again.)
(D) あーオッケーオッケー (Got it. Okay. Okay.)
(A) で入って来てGood morning から入る。(Then, I  will enter and

start by saying ‘good morning.’)
(B) あ、じゃあ (Ah. I see.)
(A) 一回 (Change once).
(B) この切り替えはめちゃめちゃ早い、意外と？(This change is

pretty quick, unexpectedly?)
(A) 一回変わる。(Change once.)
(A) 一回外に、(Go out once.)
(B) 一回出てGood morning, 。。Dって。。(Go out once. Say “Good

morning . . . D . . .)
(A) そっちきて。。。順番に入る入る。(Go over there . . . then enter

the room one by one.)
(B) まあまあまあ (That’s right.)
(A) で、来て、このセリフは適当に言って。数字を。 (And then,

come here. And then say this line appropriately, and say the number.)

Translanguaging in PBLL 57
(B) うん (Yeah.)
(A) それで、あのースマホでチェックして。携帯で。(And then,

check on your smartphone. On the cellphone.)
(B) あーおれ。(Oh, me?)
(A) Mリーダーで。(with Mreader).
(A) スマホでチェックする動作を入れれば多分なんかそれっぽくな

りそう。(If you do the action of checking with the smartphone, it
looks like that . . .)
(C) C が大変そう。(It looks tough for C).
(C) 私とかはまだ平気だけど ([some other members] and I are okay,
but . . .)
(C) D めっちゃ (It might be hard for [D]).
(A) いや、あーでもそうなんか流れが行ければ (No, as long as the
flow of action goes okay . . .)
(B) いつもの朝のあのあの流れをやりゃあいいはなし (All we have to
do is do that the morning sequence.)
Again, while not immediately apparent from the transcript alone, these
students were reviewing and making changes to the document depicted
on their smartphones during Japanese time. Of particular importance for
this analysis, however, is not the document itself but rather the ways that
the students’ language in Excerpt 2 is shaped by the document. For exam-
ple, at the beginning of the excerpt, A and B are discussing how to enter
the room to begin the first sequence of dialogue in the drama. This lengthy
exchange, where student A first proposes that B enter the scene quickly
and greet the class, is essentially a process of choreographing actions that
will appropriately frame the English the students have drafted on their
smartphones. Somewhat humorously, this particular drama is actually
a reenactment of the class itself, which typically involves referring to an
online database of graded readers (i.e., Mreader). As a result, student
A proposes that B, who is the ‘teacher’ character in this drama, use his
smartphone as a prop in the scene. In this way, the use of the simple PLE
that these students have created for this project task not only facilitates
the efficient use of both English and Japanese to complete the project, but
also the technology itself (i.e., the smartphone) can clearly be seen as an
essential feature of these students’ lived experience.

Creating
During English time, participants took turns leading the discussion. The
leader’s job was to propose additional sentences to the drama script,
which other members of the group built upon. In general, the leader con-
tinues to direct the flow of conversation for as long as he or she could
continue. Based on the data presented here, group members primarily
built upon the language introduced by the leader in two ways: (1) by

58  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
finishing the leader’s sentence as the leader is talking, or (2) by suggesting
how the leader can complete his or her sentence after they finish speaking.

Excerpt 3: Creating During English Time
(A) I say stop  .  .  . stop. No, no, no. At first, C go to driver license

school. Ride car with me. I said, ‘No, no, no.’
(B) Stop, right? Stop, stop, okay.
(C) Oh my god.
(A) Okay.
(B) And then when . . . when I have to appear?
(D) Uh, after . . .
(A) This scene.
(C) Uh, finish the . . . finish the . . . drive.
(D) Drive . . . Then she (B) appear.
(A) Said . . .
(B) Your diving is so bad. Like that? Like this?
(D) Too bad.
(B) Too bad.
In Excerpt 3, student A has been functioning as the leader. The student
is developing the first scene in the drama, which is about a university
student trying to pass a driving test. Student A proposes that student C
has been going to driving school, but her driving skill is so bad that the
teacher quits. For the next four lines, there is no leader in the conversa-
tion. Then, in response to B’s question in line 5, D begins to take the role
of the leader from line 6 onward. Student B then co-creates the next sec-
tion of the drama based on D’s prompt in line 9, by proposing character
dialogue in line 11 (“Your driving is so bad. Like that? Like this?”).

During Japanese time, while the dynamics are similar, the conversations
are naturally more fluid. Excerpt 4 depicts an example of how the same
group from Excerpt 1 continued to develop their project in Japanese.

Excerpt 4: Creating During Japanese Time
(D) 私は・・ですという感じで始まって (It starts with “I’m xxx”)
(C) 突然だけど今教習時間やってるんだ (This may sound abrupt but

I’m doing the driving training now)
(D) だけど私の運転超ダメなの〜 (But I’m terrible at driving)
(C) すごい苦手ですごい苦手で仮免が取れないの (I’m really, really

bad at driving and I can’t get a permit)
(D) そこから始まって (It starts from there)
(D) AとAとCが座って始まって (A, A and C sit together and the con-

versation begins)
(D) でCが超慌てながら (Then C gets very hasty . . .)

Translanguaging in PBLL 59
(C) キィ〜 (Squeaking sound)

  (Everyone) 笑い (laughs)
(D) それ終わって・・して。。。やばいね (It’s over . . . then . . . that’s

pretty bad)
(A) それじゃあ・・できないよ (If that’s the case, we can’t do . . .)
(D) それをそれを横目にフェラーリ乗ってきてぶ〜んつって去って

いく(She glances at her as she gets into her Ferrari and drives away)
As Excerpt 4 indicates, the students used Japanese time to continue to
construct their project script beyond the story constructed during the
English time. In Excerpt 2, the main character has been abandoned by
her first driving teacher and is now introducing herself to a new driving
teacher. The main character confesses that she could not get her driver’s
license and asks for help. The group continues to plan the story from this
point onward.

Interacting
As the previous discussion indicates, authentic language-in-use relies on
aligning with multiple affordances at different times. On a practical level,
this means that when a group of students are engaged in a classroom-
based language learning task, the number of affordances available for the
students to act upon linguistically are naturally not only connected to the
task itself. Other affordances constitute what experienced teachers might
call “time off task,” or instances where students are talking about their
social lives, telling jokes or, as is the case with many contemporary stu-
dents, checking social media on their smartphones. Excerpt 5 indicates
one such example of a time off task.

Excerpt 5: Interacting During English Time
(B) Mother: (hands clapping) Good boy. Good boy.
(A) Good boy.
(B) Very good boy.
(A) It’s a dog. Good boy. Good boy.
(B) Yeah, okay, okay.
(C) Same thing (laughing).
(A) F*** you, man (joking). I, I, I, I’m not a dog.
(B) Yeah, though, same level. Same level. Okay.
(A) Incredible. What do you mean?
(C) After school . . .
Excerpt 5 depicts one of the many examples in which students aligned
with a social affordance using the target language. In this case, Student
B is taking the role of the leader described. They have just introduced

60  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
language for the next scene in this drama, a scene where a mother
character praises her son, who is, in reality, a very bad student. Stu-
dent A responds to B’s proposed language with a joke that the proposed
phrase “good boy” is used for dogs, not for people. Student C, who is
female and has a younger brother, suggests that dogs and boys are in the
same category; so using the phrase “good boy” is appropriate. While
generalizability is not the goal of studying cases like this in depth (Fly-
vberg, 2006), the data analyzed in this study clearly show that where
such social interactions are more often present during “Japanese time,”
those same interactions tend to be present during “English time” as well.

Excerpt 6 depicts another example of alignment with a social affor-
dance in Japanese.

Excerpt 6: Interacting During Japanese Time
(C) 風邪っすか？(Do you have a cold?)
(B) のどが。エアコンでやられて。(My throat hurts. The AC did it)
(C) 最近ずっとエアコンでのどがやられて (These days, my throat

hurts because of the AC)
(B) タイマーにしないの？(Don’t you set a timer [at night]?)
(C) タイマーにしなかった。(No I didn’t set a timer)
As Excerpt 6 indicates, Student B begins to cough relatively hard. Student
C asks if she is okay, to which B replies that she left the air-conditioner
on all night, and now her throat hurts. At first glance, instances like this
would seem to represent a clear violation of best practices in foreign lan-
guage teaching. Firstly, the students are not talking about the p­ roject task,
and secondly, the students are not using the target language. The point
from a translanguaging perspective, however, is that both English and
Japanese are equally accessible tools with which to align with affordances
in the environment. When student B started coughing, C responded with
the appropriate pragmatics in their native language. In the same way,
when student C saw an opportunity to make a joke in Excerpt 5, she
acted with appropriate pragmatics in English. In this way, enhancing the
use of English a social tool in the environment may be reinforced by
g­ iving students the opportunity to use Japanese.

Reviewing
During the project session, all six groups made regular use of an infor-
mal review process. In general, this process involved either re-reading
what they had written together, or discussing the main points of what
they had written. This review often took place in Japanese time, but
there was reviewing in English time as well, and students used the same

Translanguaging in PBLL 61
leader-centered structure described to address problems in their script. In
Excerpt 7, student A has taken the role of leader and is guiding the group
through a revision of the final scene in their drama. First, A suggests that
the group needs to change the ending. Students B and C respond to A’s
comment until A concludes the conversation by saying, “Okay.”

Excerpt 7: Reviewing During English Time
(A) Change sentences ending part?
(B) I think we question this sentence teacher.
(A) I know.
(B) Teacher say this.
(C) I’m happy now.
(B) Because you . . .
(A) Okay, okay. And students say, “okay” only.
(C) Okay only. Teacher say . . .
(B) Teacher say I’m happy because you . . .
(A) Ah! Okay, okay, okay.
(D) Now スキルアップみたいな . . . (. . . you have improved.)
(A) Because . . .
(D) Because . . . you
(C) You . . .
(A) Always said that . . . you . . . change your mind.
(D) Bad habit. Bad habit.
(B) Oh.
(D) Bad habit or change the mind.
(A) You want to say because after the next . . .
(D) So you should, you, so I’m very happy because you should you . . .

you change . . .
(C) Everyone change your mind.
In this drama, the students in the class are performing badly, and the
teacher character encourages them to think of new solutions. At the end
of the drama, the teacher character tells the student characters that he or
she is satisfied with their improvement. In Excerpt 7, these students are
deciding how the teacher character should show his or her approval. Stu-
dent D proposes a Japanese phrase (スキルアップみたいな . . .), which
means “It looks like your skill has improved.” From lines 12 to 14, the
students attempt to complete this idea. Finally, A proposes the language,
“Change your mind . . .,” which D then rephrases as “bad habit.” In this
instance, the phrase “bad habit” is ultimately rejected, and the group
decides to use, “change your mind.”

In Japanese, the review process is slightly different. Excerpt 8 offers
one example.

62  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
Excerpt 8: Reviewing During Japanese Time
(D) ちょっと足りない？(Not enough time?)
(C) 動いたりしたら (If we act [it may take even more time])
(C) まあ実際でもそうなんだよね。動いたりしたら (But the reality

is, [there isn’t enough time]. Especially if we act)
(A) 。。。今めっちゃスムーズじゃないから (Right now, things are

not smooth at all)
(A) 。。されても。。たりない (Even if . . ., there isn’t enough time)
(A) あでも教科書はとりあえずもってこよう(But let’s bring the text-

book tomorrow just in case)
(D) 1979 (1979)
(Everyone) 笑い (laughs)
As Excerpt 8 indicates, this group has realized that their project script
is too long. They conclude that their performance of the drama is not
smooth yet, and that with more practice the performance will become
shorter.

Repairing
One obvious advantage of bilingual classrooms is that in general the use
of the L1 can help to clarify misunderstandings in the L2. During both
English and Japanese time, students made use of their L1 to expand and
clarify their points. Returning once again to the basic idea of the affor-
dance, an obvious misunderstanding is a confirmable social phenomenon.
This means that more than one person can become aware of a misunder-
standing, and that this awareness coupled with the opportunity to act
constitutes an affordance. The problem is that in target-language-only
classrooms, the basic position is that if an affordance cannot be aligned
with the L2, then it should be clarified through the use of the L2, or not
acted on at all. This can lead to a phenomenon that is all too common
in foreign language classrooms, namely, that students begin to pursue an
interesting idea using the target language, reach a point of ambiguity or
misunderstanding that cannot be clarified using that language alone, and
the conversation ends. Excerpt 9 exemplifies these points.

Excerpt 9: Repairing During English Time
(B) No, past verb. Past verb.
(C) パスワード? (Password?)
(B) Past . . . Past verb . . . past verb . . . um . . .
(A) What? What what do you mean? What do you mean “past verb”?
(C) ah . . .
(B) Ah . . . Japanese mean 過去形 (past tense verb). Can . . . not can . . .

Translanguaging in PBLL 63

(A) Ah . . .
(D) Could . . .
(A) Can . . .
(D) もし . . . (if)
(C) um . . . if you could . . .
(A) Could . . .

As Excerpt 9 indicates, the simple application of even basic bilingual
language skills could easily have kept the conversation going. Teachers
appear to agree that PBLL is valid as an instructional approach if stu-
dents spend time actually using their L2 to work on the project. Adopting
the translanguaging instructional approach described in this chapter can
allow students to act on misunderstandings and correct them by using
their L1 so that they can stay engaged in whatever task they are working
on using their L2.

In Excerpt 9, a misunderstanding arises when student A notices that the
modal verb “can” in one of the groups’ sentences should be written using
‘could’ (“No, past verb. Past verb”). Student C misunderstands this, and
replies using the Japanese word for “password,” which is pronounced
in a way that is both very similar to the English pronunciation of “pass-
word,” and slightly similar to the pronunciation of “past verb.” Student
B attempts to repeat the word, but when A  also does not understand
the meaning in line 4, B says the Japanese word for past tense (過去形).
Based on this quick example of translanguaging, the students are able to
continue constructing the sentence. Without it, precious planning time
may have been wasted or the interaction may have ceased completely.

During Japanese time, students also addressed grammar errors in
explicit ways. Excerpt 10 indicates this.

Excerpt 10: Repairing During Japanese Time
(C) 私は協力する？それとも(I cooperate, or something else?)
(D) I I cooperate
(D) 動詞動詞 (Verb, verb)
(C) 動詞だよ(It’s a verb)
(B) cooperate
(B) I cooperate. I cooperate.
(B) どうどうどういう文章 (What what kind of sentence?)
(A) あほんとに？わかった。私も協力するわ。って。(“Is that true?

I understood. I’ll help you”)
(D) お母さんto you (Mother says to you . . .)
(B) Let’s なんとか togetherにしたら(How about saying “let’s xxx

together”?)
(A) ふん？(Hm?)
(B) そういうわけじゃない？(That’s not what you want to mean?)

64  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
In Excerpt 10, the group members are discussing how to say 協力する
(literally “to cooperate”) in English. At first, the students translate the
word literally (as “cooperate”), but quickly realize that in the context
of their drama, a different word or phrase (“help out,” “support”) is
more appropriate. They conclude this particular conversational turn by
recognizing that “cooperate” is a difficult word, and therefore it would
be better to choose a word that is easier to remember.

Discussion
First of all, it is important to note that in the 30-minute segment of class
analyzed in the present study, all students collaborated meaningfully and
independently about their projects using English for 18 minutes or more.
This level of independent foreign language usage for B2 to A1 level stu-
dents can be considered a victory in and of itself. The research focus of
this study, however, was to identify how students used translanguaging
to align with the affordances in the project-development process. The
preliminary analysis presented here identified four strategies: creating,
interacting, reviewing, and repairing.

The examples of “creating” found in the data exemplify how on one
level, students are working through the classroom task of developing
their drama script. However, at the same time, they are able to make
spontaneous reference to their own lives and perspectives on the use
of English. In one sense, this is probably related to the nature of the
project-task itself: Creating an original drama from scratch is different
from creating a presentation on a pre-selected course topic. Yet it seems
likely that the freedom of PBLL in general, and in this drama project in
particular, allows motivated students (even at the low, intermediate level)
to apply personal experiences to classroom, target-language activities.
There is, however, no denying that for lower proficiency students, build-
ing rapport and sharing personal information is easier to do in their first
language. Therefore, based on the data presented here, the deliberate use
of Japanese appears to help facilitate students’ alignment with a variety
of different affordances in the classroom environment, such as relations
between the flexible nature of the task itself and their own creativity,
relations between their language ability and the ideas proposed by other
group members, and relations between their personal experiences and the
opportunities to develop closer relationships with their classmates.

It is likely the case that the more a person shares personal experiences
with another person, the more likely that the other person will share
personal experiences of their own. This seems to suggest that the more
creative a group becomes in how they approach their project, the more
affordances in the environment are revealed and the more opportunities
there are to align with those affordances in an active way. As Atkin-
son et al. (2007) have pointed out, language learning occurs as learners

Translanguaging in PBLL 65
develop repertoires of participation in the social actions of their imme-
diate sociocognitive ecology. The ability to respond to the affordances
offered by interlocutors (by making jokes or asking people about their
personal lives) may be seen as an example of the successful development
of these repertoires. In the case of the data presented here, there appears
to be a relationship between the degree of personal, “off topic” interac-
tions, and the kinds of spontaneous use of the target language exempli-
fied in Excerpt 3.

Yet there is no denying that different affordances in the PBLL class-
room environment constrained the roles of both English and Japanese
in order to align with them. While all groups engaged in some form of
reviewing using both Japanese and English, it became obvious based on
this data that certain logistical issues were discussed primarily in Jap-
anese. As the analysis indicates, the repairing and reviewing strategies
used by the students across groups were often far more nuanced and
productive during Japanese time. On one level, however, this kind of
coordination using their first language is encouraging because it shows
that students are engaged with the project development process. But this
may also be problematic. In their paper, Creese and Blackledge (2010)
warned about teaching practices that support students’ disadvantages. It
would certainly seem to be the case that being unable to perform certain
linguistic tasks in the target language without the use of the first language
would be considered a disadvantage for students.

Nevertheless, all groups used both Japanese and English to debate or
correct problems with the English in their project scripts. The students
in any foreign language class come from a wide range of language learn-
ing backgrounds. In a typical EFL class, these backgrounds would be
normalized using a course textbook and a fixed course of instruction.
PBLL is unique as an instructional approach because it allows students
more control over how they make use of their own personal experiences
with the language. This is particularly evident during Japanese time, as
students could in general speak more freely about their varying, nuanced
understandings of English usage in Japanese. As in the discussion of
“reviewing,” it may be somewhat problematic in the long term if stu-
dents rely too much on using Japanese to explain English words. Yet that
students were engaged in discussing the English language using Japanese
constitutes an affective victory as well as a pedagogical one.

These implications, however, are limited. To begin with, the present
study explicates how translanguaging strategies can function in a PBLL
environment, yet individual PBLL classes are often so idiosyncratic that
the behavior of students in one class may not be able to predict that of
the students in another. In addition, the concepts of both affordances and
alignment as indicators of SLA are not refined analytic concepts. Whether
or not the presence or absence of alignment, for example, is a consistently
observable predictor of language learning success is, at present, still a

66  James Carpenter and Sawako Matsugu
question for empirical researchers. Nevertheless, these concepts appear
to have the power to explain the value of instructional approaches such
as PBLL in ways that conventional, cognitivist theories and concepts do
not. For this reason, continued research on PBLL environments adopting
an ecological approach may be useful.

This final point highlights another important limitation of the pre-
sent study. The concept of affordance refers to the relations between an
organism’s ability and the features of the environment. For this reason,
research into affordances necessarily involves research into the embodied
experience of the participants. That the present study relies exclusively
on aural language data without the benefit of video with which to code
participants’ physical actions is a methodological limitation.

Conclusion
As previously mentioned, Foster’s (2009) argument about the inherent
difficulty in mapping a direct, explicit relationship between PBLL and
SLA outcomes should be taken seriously. However, adopting the ecologi-
cal approach previously described can frame this problem in a different
way. In so doing, the apparent difficulty in controlling for and measuring
student input and output disappears. In its place, a case can be made
that PBLL is attractive as a language learning approach precisely because
it provides a rich variety of affordances with which students can align.
It is the tendency in foreign language instruction to focus on “target-
language-only” classrooms that can make the application and assessment
of PBLL difficult or untenable in many contexts. However, the purpose of
this chapter is not to suggest that PBLL classes should replace language
skill-building courses that emphasize explicit learning. In fact, PBLL is
often at its most effective when it is incorporated into such courses. The
point of chapters like this is to suggest that firstly, “target-language-only”
environments limit students’ ability to draw meaning from their learning
experience, and secondly, that PBLL is effective as a language enrichment
tool and deserves curriculum space in foreign language programs.

As a final note, it is also worth emphasizing that the instructional
approach presented in this chapter is, at least in part, made possible by its
unique point in history. As previously mentioned, the students depicted
here made extensive use of their smartphones, in particular online dic-
tionaries, translating applications, and social media, to coordinate their
project activities. The significance of such technology in translanguag-
ing spaces cannot be overstated. To use the language of sociocognitive
theory adopted in this chapter, the ability to align with an affordance in
Japanese—for example, by having an idea about how to advance the sto-
ryline in the groups’ drama project—could be transferred into alignment
using English with a speed and efficiency only made possible through the
use of the digital tools that these students had at their disposal. However,

Translanguaging in PBLL 67

the degree to which virtual spaces are reshaping the boundaries between
languages and cultural artifacts, both in the immediate present and in
the overarching culture that frames these students’ lives is beyond the
scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to say that the
use of such technologies represents a democratization of knowledge,
or the availability of knowledge. In the same way, it could be said that
approaches such as PBLL represent a democratization of the language
education enterprise because students are given the chance to take con-
trol of their learning. Such learning spaces seem likely to become richer
and more complex with time.

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4 Project-Based Learning in the
Advanced German Class

Integrated Content and
Language Learning

Roswita Dressler, Bernadette Raedler,
Kristina Dimitrov, Anja Dressler, and
Garrett Krause

Background
Project-based learning (PBL) is “a systematic teaching method that
engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended
inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and
carefully designed projects and tasks” (Markham, Larmer,  & Ravitz,
2003, p.  4). The benefits of PBL for content-based language teaching
include authenticity and real-life application (Foss, Carney, McDon-
ald, & Rooks, 2007); improved written skills (Calogerakou & Vlachos,
2011; Ünver, 2008); motivation (Hsieh, 2012); intercultural awareness
(Eppelsheimer, 2017); and enhanced teamwork skills (Miller, Hafner, &
Ng, 2012). Instructors also notice increased student autonomy and flex-
ibility among instructor and student roles (Gülbahar & Tinmaz, 2006;
Lam  & Lawrence, 2002). PBL “involves individual or group activi-
ties such as research reports, website development, and digital stories”
allowing students to focus “on the development of language, content,
and skills in an integrated and meaningful way” (Beckett & Slater, 2018,
p. 1). All of these elements speak to the usefulness of PBL in second lan-
guage course design.

However, at the post-secondary level, advanced language learning
classes often have small enrollments (fewer than six students), which do
not lend themselves well to the group project work often associated with
PBL, where students typically work in groups of two to five students
(Apedoe, Ellefson, & Schunn, 2012; Kooloos et al., 2011). While small
enrollments hold the potential for a strong focus on individual learning,
Gülbahar and Tinmaz (2006), who themselves designed a PBL course for
a class of eight students, maintained that “forming groups of two or three
people for carrying out such a project would be more suitable” (p. 319,
our emphasis). This statement appears to consider class size rather than
the characteristics of the PBL project design as problematic.

70  Roswita Dressler et al.
Additionally, instructors and students in some language departments

have little familiarity with this course design, making the introduction
of student-chosen projects challenging for instructors whose emphasis is
often on language-learning opportunities for the purpose of studying lit-
erature (Krsteva & Kukubajska, 2014). Yet acknowledging students’ per-
sonal goals for language learning and providing technologically infused
PBL can complement other courses and provide instructors with oppor-
tunity for growth in their teaching practices. In light of the lack of knowl-
edge of how to design PBL courses when enrollments are small, we argue
that there is a need for research that investigates PBL in courses with
small enrollments to inform instructors of how PBL and student-chosen
projects can be introduced and implemented.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine whether the design of one
senior-level German course for a small number of students met the char-
acteristics of a project-based learning course so that the conceptualiza-
tion of PBL can be expanded to specifically include courses with small
enrollments. This action research project involved two instructors and
three students in the examination of the teaching and learning through
the course. Stoller’s (2006) 10 characteristics of a PBL course served as a
framework for the research. The results shed light on the extent to which
the design of the course met those characteristics. In expanding the con-
ceptualization of PBL to include individual projects, the understandings
gained from this use of PBL informs the field of second language peda-
gogy in senior-level language courses.

Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning, or handlungsorientierter Unterricht as it is known
in German pedagogy, involves designing courses around authentic pro-
jects. This pedagogy arose out of experience- and perception-based edu-
cation work by Jan Comenius, Johann Pestalozzi, Maria Montessori, and
Jean Piaget. William Heard Kilpatrick, John Dewey’s student, introduced
the project method as a purposeful activity on the part of the learner to
Dewey’s problem method of teaching. PBL was introduced to second-
language education in the 1960s and 1970s (Legutke & Thomas, 1991).
Still, it was not a common pedagogy of the language department in which
this course took place.

Proponents of PBL reported a number of advantages in its use in the
design of language learning courses of various sizes. Moje, Tehanicollazo,
and Marx (2001) noted its benefits in content-based language teaching,
including an element of authenticity in its real-life application to the work
produced by individuals and groups of students in a class of 32. Calo-
gerakou and Vlachos (2011) found evidence of improved written skills,
motivation, and intercultural awareness where students from one class
with an enrollment of 20 worked with an overseas partner from another

PBL in the Advanced German Class 71
class of 20 students. Students in another PBL class noticed enhanced
teamwork skills while working in groups of three on video documenta-
ries (Miller et al., 2012). As well, instructors noticed increased student
autonomy and a flexibility among instructor and student roles sharing
the responsibility for learning as they worked in partners on a webpage
concerning a Spanish business topic (Lam  & Lawrence, 2002). All of
these elements speak to the usefulness of PBL in second language course
design with embedded group work.

PBL is a natural application of the skills learners need in real life. When
the field is a profession, instructors can envision projects that the pro-
fessionals might do in their daily work life (for science examples, see
Eskrootchi & Oskrochi, 2010; Martínez, Herrero, & de Pablo, 2011).
When the field is not a profession, the instructor must envision what
equivalent projects might be. When these projects are a realization of
the skills required of a second language learner, they can be considered
authentic learning (Beckett  & Slater, 2018). Second language learners
desire the ability to function in the second language in the domains that
most interest them. Activities the students might do in “real life” would
be activities they would want to be able to do in their second language.
Thus, when Brown (2006) had students explore French gastronomy
through projects, one could argue that the students not only gained a
deeper cultural understanding, they participated in authentic activities
involving film, music, food critiques, and interactive Web tasks that a
first language speaker of French might also use to explore an interest in
gastronomy. However, since not all students can be assumed to hold an
interest in gastronomy, projects ideally need to be built around student
interests to be most authentic. Building a course around student interest
is a key feature of PBL courses.

Infusing technology use in the course design of PBL courses is one way
in which instructors strive for authenticity, motivation, and engagement,
especially in language courses at the post-secondary level, notably often
with students working in groups. Taiwanese university students of Eng-
lish found that using Voicethread, video, and storytelling led to higher
motivation and collaboration as well as positive language development
related to the project, provided the technology was not so difficult as
to lead to frustration (Hsieh, 2012). Students self-selected groups and
“ideally, a project was a group experience, involving two or more stu-
dents” (Hsieh, 2012, p. 21), as groups were considered to promote social
interaction and thus collaboration. Collaborative writing projects that
focus on building a wiki together can lead to satisfaction, motivation,
and learning across disciplines for students, including second language
learners. Here collaboration “is defined as two or more people work-
ing individually or together on a specific project” which suggests that
such collaboration can occur across individual projects as well as within
groups (Stoddart, Chan, & Liu, 2016, p. 144). Video projects produced

72  Roswita Dressler et al.
by Japanese university students of English in short-term intensive courses
connected them to real-life uses of English and resulted in a final product
that was tangible and of a quality they could be proud of (Foss et  al.,
2007). Here projects were conducted in pairs and larger groups, depend-
ing on the nature of the project. Technology-infused language learning
lends itself well to PBL, but notably, most courses are designed around
group projects.

Among studies of the use of PBL in university courses, few speak to the
small enrollments common in advanced language courses. Some instruc-
tors even recommend large class sizes are necessary to make the use of
PBL more feasible (Gülbahar & Tinmaz, 2006). Considering the reality of
classes with small enrollments, we argue that group work is an assumed
part of the accepted conceptualization of PBL, but needs to be expanded
to include classes with small enrollments. Therefore, the research ques-
tion that guided this study was: Can Stoller’s 10 characteristics of a PBL
course be applied to advanced language courses with small enrollments?

Methodology
This qualitative research was undertaken as an action research project.
Action research is “any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher research-
ers . . . to gather information about how their particular [educational set-
ting] operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn” (Mills,
2014, p. 8). This methodology serves as a means for PBL instructors to
investigate perceptions of PBL teaching among teachers and students (see
Beckett & Zhao, 2014). Action research follows iterative cycles of look-
ing, thinking, and acting (Stringer, 2014). Looking involves building a pic-
ture of the current situation and gathering information about the problem.
Thinking necessitates interpreting and analyzing that data, while acting
involves resolving the problem and moving forward with practical solu-
tions. Together, these three elements make one cycle of action research.

In this study, looking involved gathering information about the way
the course being studied had been taught previously, putting together
a plan for the first iteration of a project-based course, and gathering
evidence along the way that could later be used to analyze the course.
These data sources included the drafts and final products of the students,
the co-constructed assessment tools, lessons, and versions of semester
plans as well as reflections from the students and their final topic exhi-
bitions. Thinking describes the work of analyzing how well the course
was designed. To strengthen this section, we drew upon Stoller’s (2006)
framework of 10 characteristics of PBL courses, which we will outline in
detail. Acting represents the conclusions we drew about this iteration and
the plans we made for future iterations of the course. In this chapter, we
focus on our first cycle of action research only, although in the spirit of
iterative research, we include our recommendations for future research.

PBL in the Advanced German Class 73
Stoller (2006), in examining research into PBL to establish a theo-
retical framework, suggested that the following characteristics of PBL
courses should be present to provide positive outcomes such as motiva-
tion, engagement, and the development of expertise. Our objective in
using this conceptualization as a theoretical framework is to determine if
it applies to courses with small enrollments, thereby expanding the con-
ceptualization of PBL to include such courses.
Theoretically strong PBL courses:
  1. have a process and product orientation
  2. are defined, at least in part, by the student
  3. extend over a period of time (not just one class)
  4. encourage natural integration of skills: technology and communi-

cation skills
  5. hold a dual commitment to language and content learning
  6. have students work in groups and on their own
 7. require students to take some responsibility for their own learn-

ing through the gathering, processing, and reporting of information
from target language resources
  8. result in teachers and students assuming new roles and responsibilities
  9. produce a tangible final product for a larger audience
10. conclude with student reflections on process and product
While not all PBL courses have all these characteristics, the 10 represent
important elements that strengthen the learning and engagement students
experience in these courses, which were our goals for this course as well.
However, to our knowledge, Stoller’s (2006) framework has not been
field tested in a course with a small enrollment. Therefore, in addition
to providing a valuable structure for our data analysis, our use of this
framework expands the conceptualization of PBL to include courses with
small enrollments.

Research Context
The course studied was situated in the language class sequence of a univer-
sity German department in North America. The students take first-year and
second-year German to receive a solid foundation in listening, speaking,
reading, and writing. The third-year German classes take on specific foci:
reading and writing in one and speaking and listening in the other. In the
fourth-year sequence, students take a course in advanced German gram-
mar followed by an “applied” class in which they can put their advanced
language skills to work. This applied class is called “Senior Projects in
Language” and is the course that provided the context for this research.

The course consisted of three 50-minute classes per week for 13
weeks, taught in German. The introductory classes focused on student

74  Roswita Dressler et al.
self-assessment and goal-setting using the Common European Frame-
work of References for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2001).
More and more advanced language course curricula are being aligned
with the CEFR, and curriculum designers recognize project-based learn-
ing as one course design that can target specific language levels (Arslan &
Ozenici, 2017). Since this course was aimed at a B2 proficiency level
(i.e., high intermediate), the students needed to understand what that
language assessment meant, where they might be on that scale, and what
they might want to target to improve their language skills. This level
was taken into consideration when the students proposed their general
project theme.

The introducing technology lessons examined Web 2.0 tools that might
provide skills and spark creativity for later assignments (see Casal  &
Bikowski, 2020, Chapter  9). Understanding the synergy between com-
puter software designs meant that students could apply their learning
from one platform to another, so that even though they had to do some
learning on their own for the movie-making software, they had a com-
mon vocabulary in German to discuss the use of technology.

Early on students proposed a general project theme: street art, baking,
and music. Within their themes, the students had to consider what they
would do for each of the three learning tasks (i.e., sub-projects). Each
sub-project had to present a different part of the larger project. In other
words, the content for each sub-project needed to be new, even though
elements could potentially overlap. The final products had to be predeter-
mined, as per department expectations, so the three learning tasks were
set as a video, a website, and an exhibition. These projects encourage
multimodality, communication through a variety of means (e.g., visual,
oral, aural, etc.) (Kress, 2010). They also expose student learning to a
larger audience and are often perceived by students as engaging and
authentic (Foss et al., 2007). These aspects are strengths of technology-
infused PBL, since it is through technology that multimodality and wider
exposure are made possible.

The remainder of the course was organized around three elements:
mini-lessons in response to student needs, work periods, and feedback
loops; presentations; and celebrations of learning (e.g., a video-showing
complete with popcorn). Mini-lessons included the aforementioned Web
2.0, CEFR sessions, an introduction to translation studies, the theory
behind comics, and classes on how to determine assignment criteria and
co-create rubrics. Work periods involved trips to the library’s media pro-
duction facility, individual work, and work periods facilitated by the
instructor or teaching assistant. Feedback loops involved scheduled draft
deadlines at which students presented their draft projects to each other,
and both students and instructors provided written or oral feedback
according to the shared rubrics. The process of creating rubrics taught
students about second language assessment and allowed the students to

PBL in the Advanced German Class 75
expand their German vocabulary around elements within each project.
The instructor provided guidance around the structure and the teaching
assistant provided specific feedback on the vocabulary of the rubrics.

The culmination of the learning was shared live with an intermediate
German class, online as an article on the department website, and as a
poster exhibition in the university language research facility. These ven-
ues provided authentic audiences for the products.

The authors of this chapter are the two instructors of the course,
Roswita and Bernadette, and their three students, Kristina, Anja, and
Garrett. Roswita, the instructor-of-record, had some experience with
project-based learning through her previous learning on signature peda-
gogies, but no direct experience with teaching it at this level. Bernadette,
the teaching assistant, had no experience with this form of pedagogy, and
the students, Kristina, Anja, and Garrett, expressed not having previously
encountered this form of course design in university. Thus, this iteration
of the course was a relatively new experience for almost all involved.

Senior Projects in Language: The First Iteration
To understand the analysis of the course, it is first necessary to present the
three project themes chosen by the students and how these were opera-
tionalized as a video, website, and exhibition. Each student had a personal
motivation for choosing their topic, which in some cases overlapped with
their career ambitions. Kristina wanted to learn about German baking.
Her video was a how-to video for baking a Frankfurter Kranz cake. Her
exhibition was on German pretzels, which she baked and shared in addi-
tion to presenting on, and her website documented her learning behind
these baking projects and one additional project. Anja chose the theme
Street Art because she wanted to investigate the art of Barbara, a street
artist in Heidelberg. For the video, she produced a mini-documentary.
For the exhibition, she created and photographed her own street art that
followed Barbara’s style, and for the website she documented the process:
the thinking and learning behind each poster. Garrett created a how-to
piano lesson video, translated a pop song from German into English, and
created a website repository of official translations of songs into English,
organized by genre. Although eclectic, the three projects represented the
direction the students wanted to take their learning, but also collective
learning, as each participant researcher was involved in the shaping of
each project through collaborative work as a class.

Looking
“Senior Projects in Language” had run as a course previously, but archived
descriptions of the course indicated that it had been envisioned as a tra-
ditional literature and culture course around a topic of the instructor’s

76  Roswita Dressler et al.
choosing. Little information was available as to how the course was
designed. From the course outlines and the previous experience in the
faculty, the instructor and teaching assistant (Roswita and Bernadette)
were aware that students were accustomed to research papers and class
presentations as assessment. In designing the course, Roswita focused
on including elements she felt would make the course unique: student-
chosen projects, technology-based products, and formative feedback
loops. Although preparation prior to the course start was limited due to
the emergent nature of the topic themes, the thought that went into the
course provided a basis upon which to build once input from the students
was available. Initially, the data that would be used to analyze the course
was limited to the final products (assignments), but as the instructors
reflected upon their teaching, the importance of the co-created rubrics,
course overview schedule versions, and student feedback emerged as
important data sources. To ensure ethical treatment of all of these data,
the instructors invited the students into the research as co-authors.

Thinking
As our thinking, we analyzed the alignment between the course design
and Stoller’s (2006) 10 characteristics of theoretically strong PBL courses.
We examined what the planning (e.g., syllabus, original semester plan),
process (e.g., revised versions of the semester plan, our draft feedback),
and products (e.g., final assignments, online article, exhibition) revealed
about our efforts to design and conduct a PBL class for a small enroll-
ment of advanced German second language students. Using the charac-
teristics as points of departure, we provide examples in this section.

PBL courses have a process and product orientation. For this course,
the orientation toward process was evident in the time spent learning the
skills needed to create the three sub-projects (e.g., classes on building a
website). Planning began with each student handing in a written proposal
explaining their choice of topic and how this topic would be taken up
in the three products (i.e., video, website, presentation). This proposal
involved preliminary language learning about the topics. Students had to
research the vocabulary and key concepts behind their topic and use the
appropriate genre of writing for a proposal. Some elements of this genre
would have been familiar to them but combining it with the vocabulary
was the first step toward learning about their topic.

Additional planning and language learning came through participa-
tion in subsequent feedback checkpoints. These checkpoints served to
focus class work on learning and keep the students on track (process).
After checkpoints, students returned to their drafts to improve them.
During feedback sessions, the discussions could focus on aspects of tech-
nology or language, but the students had to give their constructive criti-
cism in German. Garrett spoke slowly and carefully in this first video

PBL in the Advanced German Class 77
draft, trying to make sure his pronunciation was accurate. The group
felt his speaking came across as unnatural and had to give him feedback
that needed to be phrased in the conditional (e.g., Wenn du schneller
sprechen könntest, dann würde die Sprache natürlicher vorkommen [If
you could speak faster, then you would sound more natural]). Based on
this language feedback, Garrett practiced his video monologue so that he
could record it at a more natural speaking speed that matched the genre
of a YouTube video. Similar feedback was articulated that focused on the
technology learning. Kristina refilmed her YouTube video to remove the
black bars that appeared as a result of failing to lock the iPad rotation
function, and Anja reedited her video to slow down the scrolling segment
that others found dizzying. Through technology-infused PBL, the end
products in these examples were high-quality final videos, achieved by
working as a class group to provide feedback to individual projects.

Projects in PBL classes are defined, at least in part, by the students.
Meyer and Forester (2015) noted that PBL can increase student moti-
vation toward learning German and help them to apply this learning
toward personal professional goals. The students reported that the free-
dom to choose one’s project fueled their motivation and allowed them to
gear their project toward such a goal. Students were motivated to express
themselves accurately in German to get their point across, because their
projects were personally meaningful. Unlike in larger classes where indi-
viduals might have to compromise to agree on a group project, in this
small class, students could focus on a very specific topic of their own
interest. Garrett explained that he was “working towards degrees in both
German and music at the university, so [he tried to] think of ways [he
could] combine these interests . . . whenever possible” (post-course reflec-
tion). In this course, all students chose their topics based on personal or
professional interests, as advocated by Stoller (2006) so their language
learning centered primarily around their topic of interest.

Projects within PBL courses extend over a period of time. When PBL
was attempted in short-term courses, researchers reported that the lack of
time was a factor that resulted in narrowing the scope of the project and
limiting peer and instructor feedback (Foss et al., 2007). In this course,
the students had the whole semester to investigate their topic, so they
were able to undertake a meaningful project because they had the time
to explore several aspects of their topic and do so with depth and reflec-
tion. However, unlike in group work in larger classes, they were individu-
ally entirely responsible for their project. The timescale also allowed for
instructors to respond to student interests with tailored mini-lessons and
changes to the original semester plan, for peer and instructor feedback,
and for the targeting of audiences outside of the classroom. This flexibil-
ity was facilitated by the small number of total projects, as instructors in
larger classes with more group projects may not have the time to accom-
modate such changes.

78  Roswita Dressler et al.
PBL encourages the natural integration of skills. The skills in this

course included technology and communication skills, the latter of which
included both language and pragmatics. The students learned about Web
2.0 tools and website building. Starks-Yoble and Moeller (2015) noted
that technology has been shown to enhance language learning in the Ger-
man language classroom because it allows students to express themselves
creatively in the target language. In this course, students learned how to
shoot a video, how to use the movie-making software of their choice, and
how to talk about those processes in German. In addition, they sought to
improve their language through research in authentic German language
contexts, revisions of scripts, and class discussions about domain-specific
language (e.g., music, baking, technology, literature, popular culture,
current events). They also practiced their skills of narration and live pres-
entation. The integration was natural to the point of needing to be made
explicit when asked for their feedback in the course reflection. This char-
acteristic is not specific to group work or individual projects, but rather
speaks to the nature of PBL in general.

This dual commitment to language and content learning is a specific
focus of PBL courses in second languages. Garrett chose song translation
as one of his subprojects and discovered the challenge of finding trans-
lational equivalents that also uphold the integrity of the song in terms
of register and genre. For example, he struggled with how to translate
“Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow” (Fleetwood Mac). Anja tried to
match the witty nature of Barbara’s commentaries by posting creative
equivalents on posters around campus and her neighborhood. For exam-
ple, on a recycling sorting station she posted a heart with the word “Mül-
ltrennung” (garbage separation) to show support for her university’s new
recycling system, because it reminded her of Germany’s complicated
waste management system involving the sorting of household garbage
and recycling. Kristina reported that the language and content learning
was meaningful for her: “The experience definitely helped me see a big-
ger picture of my cultural studies and expanded my vocabulary in regard
to food and cooking words” (post-course reflection). For the dual com-
mitment to remain throughout, the two aspects of language and content
need to be meaningfully connected. With smaller enrollments, instructors
are better able to focus on integrating content and language learning as
the number of projects is fewer and more specifically defined.

PBL involves both working in groups and individually. Initially this
characteristic reads as specific to large classes with students working in
groups. However, the work students did on individual projects in this
course was balanced by group feedback sessions in which they read,
viewed, and listened to each other’s work. Not only did this group work
allow them to give each other feedback, but it developed an ethos of class
learning on each of the topics, such that instructors and students came
away with increased understanding of the content of all three projects,

PBL in the Advanced German Class 79
not just the one they were personally working on. Language learning was
also expanded since all students needed to familiarize themselves with the
vocabulary from the other projects as well.

Stoller (2006) noted that PBL in second language classes requires
students to take some responsibility for their own learning through the
gathering, processing, and reporting of information from target language
resources. This responsibility is heightened when working on individual
projects where the amount and type of language that is learned is based
primarily on the commitment of the individual student. This increased
autonomy for language learning is a benefit of PBL observed by other
researchers as well (e.g., Lam & Lawrence, 2002). Roswita and Berna-
dette became additional resources. For example, Kristina was looking for
a glaze recipe for the pretzels and Roswita was able to find one through
a contact in the German community. The hand-written recipe in an older
German woman’s writing was an authentic target language resource
from which Kristina had to make meaning. Anja found internet research
in German a resource for her more contemporary topic: “I  found that
through Tumblr I was able to find a lot of original German content, I was
really helping my cultural and linguistic skills by reading posts by native
Germans and looking up the background to things that I didn’t under-
stand right away” (post-course reflection). For students accustomed to
topic-based classes, finding their own resources can be a challenge, but
embracing this challenge resulted in increased language-learning oppor-
tunities for the students in this class as they read or discussed the content
in the target language, expanding their competence in the specific topic
domain they were investigating.

In PBL, teachers and students assume new roles and responsibilities
(Stoller, 2006). As with other PBL research (e.g., Lam  & Lawrence,
2002), in this class, Roswita and Bernadette were mediators and facilita-
tors between the technological and language requirements and resources.
They served as coaches, encouraging students to challenge themselves and
strive for excellence in content and language. As well, they were reflective
practitioners, always looking at their own practice to improve from class
to class and looking forward. Students took on the role of planner, usually
the domain of the instructor. Through PBL, students learned how to learn,
developing their skills as autonomous learners, mapping out their work
schedules within the larger class schedule (Starks-Yoble & Moeller, 2015).
These new roles and responsibilities did not always sit well. The class
originally had four students, but one student dropped the course midway,
possibly due to difficulties managing her time on projects, as she missed
draft deadlines and as a result could not capitalize upon the feedback that
others received. This aspect of PBL courses requires commitment on the
part of both students and instructors, and in courses with small enroll-
ments that necessitate individual projects, that new, more responsible role
can be a weight that some students cannot or choose not to bear.

80  Roswita Dressler et al.
Students were also called upon to be effective communicators with each

other and with the wider audiences of their sub-projects, which included
students with lower German competence who attended a presentation
of the topics in their class. As well, students’ roles in peer feedback ses-
sions meant they were evaluators of themselves and others, which for
most was the first time they had been asked to take on these roles in their
university careers. The PBL design sets up these different roles, but does
not require them; PBL design is most effective when these role transfor-
mations happen.

Stoller reported that PBL course design results in a tangible final prod-
uct for a larger audience. These final products can be either group or
individual ones. By focusing on their audience, students were motivated
to focus on meaning and audience enjoyment (Starks-Yoble & Moeller,
2015). In the case of the video, which was uploaded to YouTube and
embedded in the students’ websites, this larger audience was the World
Wide Web. The same could be said for the websites themselves. This
wider audience stems from the use of technology as a natural part of PBL.
The URLs were promoted in the publicity that went with the exhibition.
The two components of the exhibition had different audiences. The class
presentation to the intermediate German class had those students and
their instructor as an audience. The displays of the posters in the uni-
versity’s language center resulted in longer-term exposure to the passing
public. These large and varied audiences provided an authentic motiva-
tion for high quality final products.

Theoretically strong PBL courses conclude with student reflections on
process and product. This can be done most easily with smaller num-
bers, but such reflections can work with any size of class. Roswita had
not built this into the original design, but when she asked the depart-
ment to provide publicity for the exhibition, the administrative assistant
solicited written responses from the students. She asked the students two
questions:

1. How did you come up with your project idea?
2. How will you incorporate what you have learned so far in this pro-

ject/class into your other studies and how does this fit or help further
your overall educational goals and objectives?

The second question served as a reflection question. Anja answered: “The
projects through the class help me to find out more about contemporary
German culture, while also immersing myself to an extent into it” (post-
course reflection). Her answer revealed that the course engaged her in
aspects of contemporary culture, aspects she felt “remain often [in] the
background” of most of her other courses. Garrett noted: “The larger
projects we have undertaken in this class (video and website production,
and public presentations) have all included learning some new skills that

PBL in the Advanced German Class 81
will be widely applicable to other classes in school and also for jobs after
school” (post-course reflection). The relevance for his own life, which
Garrett spoke of, emerged from the authentic nature of the tasks (Moje
et al., 2001). For Anja, the pedagogy had direct relevance to her career
goal: “I am on my way to becoming a teacher and I would love to be able
to incorporate [PBL] into my classroom when I  am fortunate enough
to have one” (post-course reflection). Not only did these post-course
reflections provide us as instructors with feedback showing that we had
been on the right track with our choice and implementation of PBL, they
also provided the students with the opportunity to reflect on and make
explicit their personal growth over the course of the semester.

Conclusion
In designing a PBL course for this advanced German language course, we
were able to explore if Stoller’s (2006) 10 characteristics of PBL courses
could be applied to courses with small enrollments. Looking at the inclu-
sion of these characteristics, we understand how the PBL design resulted
in a course that students found engaging and personally meaningful.
Specifically, the three products of the course integrated technology, con-
tent, and language and were of high quality, appropriate to their genre.
The course design wove in individual projects and group activities that
strengthened individual learner autonomy regarding the project theme
and group accountability for peer and instructor feedback. These aspects
we found in looking at PBL led to further thinking about how PBL works
in courses with small enrollments.

Thinking about the experience, what we found most surprising were
the role redefinitions that resulted from teaching a PBL course. Notably,
for the students, it appeared to be a challenge to be “allowed” to choose
one’s topic and propose how to divide it along the lines of the three
sub-projects. For one student, being in a group might have scaffolded
that challenge, but being responsible for an individual project highlighted
an area for personal growth she chose not to work on. For instructors,
facilitating rather than lecturing meant refraining from fully designing
the course beforehand. It also required that they remained open and will-
ing to change aspects of the course schedule due to the nature and top-
ics selected for projects. Additionally, they sometimes needed to address
challenges that students experienced. We found it necessary to communi-
cate explicitly that autonomy, time management, and collaboration were
shared responsibilities. Some instructors might consider the nature of this
facilitation role to be more challenging for the PBL course compared to a
traditional course. These roles felt awkward to all involved at first, but as
the semester progressed, the collaboration served to reinforce these roles
and a sense of comfort emerged. This thinking points to the challenges
of PBL that are not necessarily unique to courses with small enrollments,

82  Roswita Dressler et al.

but the high level of individual autonomy and group accountability
points to a heightened challenge of the small enrollment that might oth-
erwise be mitigated by group work. Some students are more challenged
than others with autonomy, time management, and collaboration, such
as the student who withdrew from the course. Therefore, PBL practition-
ers need to take these higher demands into account when designing PBL
courses for small classes.

Additionally, some language instructors feel the need to quantify the
improvement in language knowledge. Gains in PBL are domain-specific
and deep learning does not necessarily translate into a breadth of learn-
ing. However, we are all accountable to our colleagues and must be able
to articulate the progress the students achieve. There is language gain
through PBL (e.g., Beckett, 1999; Beckett & Slater, 2005). We assessed
those through holistic rubrics that set standards for pronunciation flu-
ency as well as written and spoken accuracy in final products. However,
we recognize the lack of assessment of concrete language goals as a limi-
tation of this study and call for future research in this area.

Acting on the results from this research and our reflection on the limi-
tations of our study, we acknowledge the need for more research into the
role of the instructor in PBL and the development of reflective practice
among post-secondary instructors. Personally, we have moved forward
in our action research to the next iteration, in which we will survey stu-
dents as to their perception and learning about PBL while also gathering
data to explore concrete language progress. This iteration will act on the
instructor and student challenges that emerged from this first cycle.

This investigation of the PBL design of an advanced German course
informs our understanding of how PBL can be defined for courses with
small enrollments. Small PBL courses, especially those infusing technol-
ogy into the projects, can foster student engagement, autonomy, and lan-
guage gains, but instructors need to be aware that the higher demands on
individual student autonomy, the role redefinitions among students and
instructors, and the challenge with assessing concrete language gains pro-
vide unique challenges to using PBL. In a climate of efforts to improve ped-
agogy in the higher education second language classroom, this study sheds
light on the aspects that influenced the success of one course and provides
direction for future research in PBL in courses with small enrollments.

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