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To answer this question I think that discussing what type of project should be used is important. In the context of a class that teaches English for Academic Purposes the student profile is the key factor. Particularly, questions like, “which department are the students studying in and what the needs of the department are?” In my case I am teaching freshman law students. Since they are freshman they have little to no knowledge of the law, but that is not a major concern since this a skills and language course. The law department wants the students to be able to read and connect information to form a coherent and persuasive argument. They want students to be able to convey the argument through writing and speaking. While lawyers in Turkey don’t do much speaking in the courtroom, that isn’t the way the system works here, the university wants the students to be proficient in speaking. Taking these factors into consideration, I have designed my Legal English course around a project, which is carried out in stages throughout the semester. The course is thirteen weeks long and I see the students once a week for three hours. In order to keep them stimulated and motivated to come to class I have provided a goal for them to achieve at the end of the semester. The project is a mock trial, a murder trial. The students are divided up into groups of six. In order to give students more autonomy and ownership of the project I allow them to choose their groups and with a little gentle guidance from me, what role to choose either a witness or lawyer. The assessment is done through a series of tasks that build the skills necessary to complete the project. The students are writing speeches and examination questions based on the reading of the witness statements. Reading skills are taught along with question structures like tag questions and open ended questions. The structures are basic and the students learned them early on in their language acquisition, but now they are being used in a more complex context. Writing skills are introduced so students will be able to employ rhetorical devices to persuade the audience, such as analogies and allusions. Speaking skills are developed for both accuracy and fluency. The prepared questions and answers of the witnesses and lawyers are practices for accuracy, the cross examination questions that the witness has not seen but can guess at demonstrate the students fluency with the language. Lawyers must be listening carefully to the questions and answers of the witness to make objections if a legal rule has been broken, so there is a built in purpose to listen in the project. Target language is taught to help recognize certain objections that a lawyer would find in questions and answers from the opposing side. I purposely leave in some errors that the students make when writing questions to allow for this authentic interaction between the students. Each week the groups (I call them teams the students like a bit of competition) complete a task that brings them closer to being ready for the trial. The tasks are assessed, and revisions based on feedback are allowed. Some tasks are individual and some are group based tasks. While the context of the task is the same the variety of tasks keeps the students motivated and keeps the class fresh. Knowing that the goal of the tasks is not an exam they will study for but a simulation that will try to win is motivating for most students. In a nutshell, using a project to structure your course can keep the students and teacher focused on the same goal; it keeps them motivated and brings a sense of doing some authentic work.
