COMBINING PROJECT-BASED LEARNING AND ROLE PLAY IN SYNERGETIC TEACHING

Project Based Learning (PBL) is a well-grounded, long-practiced teaching tool that can be instrumental in students’ mastering theoretical disciplines, such as theory of grammar, lexicology, introduction to linguistics, general linguistics. At the beginning of the term students are offered research mono projects for teams of 3-5 students. (Cf. examples of actual projects in Edulearn 2018).

The objective of the research was to evaluate the efficiency of PBL and role play in research practice of 180 students. PBL is meant to help students master research skills in the chosen field of linguistics, work with practical linguistic data within different linguistic paradigms – in sociolinguistics, semantics, pragmatics, discursive and corpus linguistics. What we suggested is combining PBL with the role play format of teaching. 180 students and their 17 teachers took part in the on-site experimental evaluation of students’ research and interactive skills. The experiment consisted of several stages: teaching students role play format, encouraging them to use role play when doing their joint linguistic research, evaluating and assessing their ability to practice role-play-oriented interaction in their research discussions.
Teachers assessed the results in the process of teaching as well as while analyzing learning outcomes.

Before the project presentation the students are expected to master role play format to be able to further hold two intermediary sessions in practicing role play. The format may be introduced as early as possible in the education process, with a variety of roles such as:
- the team leader who distributes the roles, directs and supervises the activity;
- team leader assistant who circulates information among the team members, makes calls and briefs them about the developments in the project work;
- proceeding consultant who works on timing requirements, and takes minutes;
- supporter – provides evidence, arranges facts and ideas;
- the challenger who critically assesses the process;
- the expert who researches the problem.
- When practicing this mock format students get motivated and enjoy the process with its flexibility of the choice of roles can be extended ad hoc.

While synergetically combining the two above education formats the teacher fully enjoys the role of facilitator, as s/he keeps supervising over the process after having ”charged” the students with the assignment and giving them a free hand in defining the key parameters of the learning activity on their own.

The results have shown that first-year students are concerned with following the established pattern of role play, struggling to combine this activity with PBL, while more experienced in PBL students are revealing well-developed research and communication skills. As a result, 95% four-year students successfully implement role play in the research, which empowers them with a more detailed analysis of a linguistic area and a more professional approach to problem-solving. The interconnection between role play and PBL is vivid among those 2% students who do not rely on role play: inability/ unwillingness to effectively interact, prevents them from concentrating on the research. Their results are to a lesser extent reliable.
100% teachers admit the positive difference this synergetic union brings to a linguistic research landscape.