A comparative analysis of traditional and project-based teaching foreign languages and cultures in secondary schools

Abstract

Unfortunately, project-based instruction is used in the Ukrainian educational process imperfectly and incorrectly. This is due to the lack of attention paid to the purposeful developing of foreign language teachers’ project competence. The main problem underlies Ukrainian teachers’ misconception of the peculiarities of project-based teaching foreign languages and cultures. Most educators, who use project-based learning in the foreign language classroom, work in the obsolete paradigm of traditional instruction. This paper provides a comparative analysis of didactic and methodological characteristics of traditional and project-based teaching foreign languages and cultures to pupils of secondary schools. Such educational attributes as aims, principles, content, methodology, modes, teacher and pupils’ functions and relationships were considered. As a result, the author formulated some determining features of project method, namely ‘doing projects method’, and project-based learning, as well as described certain properties of traditional and project-based foreign language and culture learning. A special attention is paid to the interdisciplinary and integral essence of project-based learning in the foreign language classroom. In particular, it is noted that in Ukrainian universities, teacher trainers do not take into account the integrated nature of project-based learning and instruct pre-service foreign language teachers to use ‘doing projects method’ in the paradigm of artificial, traditional instruction instead of implementing innovative and authentic project-based learning to teach foreign languages and cultures. The conducted analysis is intended to familiarize Ukrainian foreign language teachers and students majoring in Specialty 014.02 Secondary Education, Language and Literature with specific features of traditional and project-based foreign language and culture learning. Realizing crucial peculiarities of these educational technologies will help to avoid fundamental errors when organizing secondary pupils’ project activities.