Effects of the combination of Project-based methodology and Cooperative learning on students' motivation and their learning process

Abstract

[eng] Project-based learning (PBL), Communicative language teaching and Cooperative learning are widely used educational approaches in contemporary education. PBL focuses on the creation of meaningful end products based on real-life situations. This approach, in combination with Communicative language teaching, seeks to provide an authentic environment for the development of students' communicative competence. PBL also encourages students to explore and express their individual opinions and perspectives in collaborative projects. Cooperative learning complements these approaches by promoting interaction among students and shared responsibility in the production of projects. In addition, the use of new technologies in the classroom provides learning opportunities by giving access to authentic resources, facilitating research and project presentation, and promoting learners' motivation. This academic paper addresses the convergence of PBL methodology and Cooperative learning in the context of learning a foreign language, specifically English, in a secondary school. A study in which secondary school students were required to create a project by working in teams and using new technologies was carried out to explore the effects of these methods on the students´ motivation and learning process. The learners expressed a clear preference for PBL and cooperative work compared to other teaching methods. They highlighted the additional motivation derived from the collaboration in groups and working with the objective of creating a project