Introduction

The use of tasks in the classroom has became an essential part to develop language

skills in students into the classroom; however, for some of them and for teachers, the

continuous use of these ones have represented to think that these activities do not signify real

life or elicit authentic communication, in other words, it increases the perception that the course

content was not related to who they really were and what they really wanted to do.

That is the reason why the projects in the classroom have been studying lately, due to

this kind of methodology has been able to engage the students in certain responsibilities, and

encourages them to set their own goals with the purpose of showing a relationship between

students’ motivation and students’ ability to process challenging materials which help them to

achieve a common purpose according to their interests, needs and skills inside and outside the

classroom.

So, this following paper aims to analyze a project: CAMPBELL R, (1996): "The Music

Project", from IT’S Magazine; which is designed to explore specially with young learners or

teenagers according to the topic; also, it is going to consider the good elements and strengths

from each of them and evaluate the aspects in which it has to improve or not as a reference for

those interested in understanding more the process of teaching English trough this

methodology.

According to this, the project is going to be analyzed according to the different stages it

takes place and the idea is to give the characteristics and strategies implemented in each

process taken in it, reflecting on the way these ones give more opportunities to the student to

improve their learning process and other abilities. Finally, it is going to illustrate how some tasks

and exercises provide opportunities to the students to negotiate meaning, increase their

language tools, and notice how language could be used from different situations and activities

which involve the discovery of their mistakes and their learning process as a basis of improving

some aspects to review in the analyzed material.

1. Project AnalysisAs we can see through the analysis of many materials, we have realized that the

process of learning and teaching a foreign language require many elements. So, we have to

take into account that this involves active processes of investigation and reflection to explode

learners’ curiosity, interests and experiences thanks to the projects can promote, stimulate and

develop other elements that in a normal class the teacher does not work such as the creativity,

the interest of searching a topic everybody has in common and the ability to solve problems.

There is a good point to think about; we believe that this project was made for a length of

20 or more learners because there is going to be a completion among each others.

Therefore, it is necessary to give importance to each stage the project is characterized

because it provides us a special way of organizing the students’ knowledge and the relationship

between the school and other factors of their real life, as it is going to be developed and showed

below:

1.1Planning StageThe success of a project depends very largely on how well organized the teacher is, and

careful, detailed attention to planning the project will communicate confidence to the students

(Fried-Booth, 2002, 13).

According to the previous idea, this stage has to be designed in order to the students can

discuss the scope and content of their project, and learn time-management and delegation of

skills to each other to develop a successful final product.

On the music project, we can see that the teacher proposed some tasks with the

purpose of engaging the students with the topic and he stages the final product at the

beginning; in this way, the main objective of this first step is that students identify musical

instruments and then complete a questionnaire to discover what is the right instrument for them.

As a result, the idea is that the students form a rock band and try to become famous with some

processes in the real life a normal band do .On it, the teacher is trying to get students’ attention

according to their likes and their general knowledge and guides them to discover their abilities

according to the topic’s project.

For example, at the start you can appreciate various images about musical instruments

and then some questions about them with the intention of they get involved and analyze the

instruments’ characteristics because they have to choose one of them. After that, the teacher

proposes some questions about students’ experiences with some instruments and habits

related to the music, and then they have to read some characteristics about the instruments

proposed and discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of all of them in order to make

a final decision, so we can see that with these first two exercises the learners are narrowing the

scope of the project.

According to the example, the teacher is also dealing with third generation tasks due to

with these activities students are concerned to work with exercises related to their previous

experience creating a good classroom attitude toward the topic which was already decided by

the teacher.

In addition, he or she includes students’ cultural interest and hobbies as we can see that

the project handles the musical world, so, the main point of these tasks is that they show

learning is more efficient if the learners are more aware of how and why they are learning, also

through them, the teacher can increase students’ motivation and develop knowledge in a

sequence of progressively complex tasks. For these reasons, it is well-oriented in the project the

idea that the teacher acts as a coach to help students understand the rationale behind the

project and have a special role of coordinating what they will be producing because of students

need to understand who their audience is and the expected learning outcome.

As teachers, applying the use of step 1 choose an instrument, according to our real

context which is America, we consider that some instruments belong to Europe and Asia; for

instance French Horn, bagpipes and gong and also are almost impossible to get them. On the

other hand, there are some expensive instruments that we think students or learners won´t can

afford them for example the accordion, saxophone, cello, harp and tuba. In general we´d

recommend to our students to choose the most common instruments according to the place we

live.

Continuing with the planning stage, in step 2 Form a band from Robert Campbell,

suggests following 5 advices in order to form a group (form a band). In our opinion, we would

add one more advice which is “to choose a leader” because it helps to the teacher in the

management and control. At the same time, we consider in the profile that should be a great

idea to put a photograph according to his or her new style and new interesting member name.

However, what it is not clear enough is if the teacher agreed with the students to prepare

the final product, if not, there should be an opened space into the project to brainstorm for

possible topics, perspectives and ideas generated by students.

1.2 Background Research According to this stage the students have to gather information about the project’s topic;

however in the music project this stage is really connected with the use of the linguistic skills.

Through them, the students are able to make references, get in touch with the topic, use their

creativity to complete some tasks according to the teacher has established and also take steps

to accomplish what they want to produce. In this way, the teacher in the project sets certain

goals and objectives that the learners are expected to solve through the creation of the final

outcome which provides at the end the opportunity to create a body of work that displays their

skills thinking about a real audience in this case thinking about as a real musical group.

In Step 3 “The Music Project” from Robert Campbell (1996), gives some procedures to

make the song successful like rhythm, theme, create a hook, make lots of money and so on. As

we can see, during this step, of course students will be using writing when they are making a

draft, then speaking, listening and reading go almost at the same time because they have to

read the song to give their opinions and changes, we mean if they like or dislike.

We add, as teachers, that students get more information about the procedures to make

the songs and how a real author makes it. We consider to make their own video because is

more attractive for the project. In this step, they have to agree how they are going to make it

and the elements that have to take into account their budget.

It is worth mentioning in Step 4 “The Music Project” from Robert Campbell (1996) the

teacher mentions that the group should have manager and publisher who are going to

coordinate them. On the other hand, we think that is better to select the manager and publisher

in advance (step 2) because it depends about the number of students to avoid missing

students. We also suggest, as teachers to remind students find out extra information about how

the artist deal with the distribution of the group profits. In this specific point, students use the

reading skill.

We should not forget the features of the manager and publisher that mention Ribé and

Vidal; that is, the three generations of tasks in project work, specifying the Global Personality

Development that should have them as leaders, i. e. speech fluency, to be intrapersonal-social

intelligence, smart and the best organizers as well.

In the same step, it develops some skills such as writing and reading from the manager

when he draft the contract, terms, duties and responsibilities; speaking when he is dealing the

contract. The publisher will practice writing skill when he makes whole marketing like

pamphlets, posters and brochures; in the same marketing, the publisher will practice the

speaking skill when he/she is on TV and radio announcements.

We are going to analyze Step 5 where Campbell shows an example about a sign

contract. In our view, the contract should be according to the context, i.e., the kind of currency if

we want to avoid misunderstandings or futures troubles, in which, students are familiarized.

Another point to add is, that Campbell did not specify some arrangements, for example we

suggest learners record a video instead of just music, we should mention that the cover must be

creative and attractive where the publisher must be involved. In addition, students will see some

cover samples to have an idea avoiding to fake them.