. <\/strong>Although a college degree has been considered the best guarantee for avoiding the status of unemployed, recent college graduates are struggling to find a job. Many universities feel the need to prepare students for a new reality. Could supporting entrepreneurial spirit in the classroom be one of the solutions to the problem? And can we expect all the students of entrepreneurship to become self-starters and founders of businesses?\u00a0 Some of them have the spark, initiative and inborn qualities for that, but not all the students who choose the speciality. We as teachers can help them find the creativity, initiative and courage in themselves. We can support and\u00a0 facilitate the process of acquiring entrepreneurial skills. The valuable skills that employers seek are: communication (writing and oral), creativity, adaptability, and critical thinking.<\/p>\nAll syllabuses have their learning goals \u00a0\u0336 \u00a0outcomes specifying \u201ewhat\u201c of content learning, but they do not address the \u201ehow\u201c of content learning \u2013 which should be considered even more important (Coyle et al 2010). The question is how to bring out the entrepreneurial\u00a0 qualities in our students. How to trigger the initiative and spirit of a businessman\/woman in them?<\/p>\n
At our college we have not consciously designed any courses integrating content and language learning (CLIL) yet, and our courses probably do not qualify as pure CLIL, but we have worked toward furthering integration of content and language learning in collaboration with the programme directors to generate the integrated curriculum content. We aim to design the courses to improve the students\u2019 productive and professional communication skills. As any learner needs a very definite connection between the learning goals and usability, the language learning module of project management for the first-year students involves a one-month \u201eproject\u201c for launching a new product or service on the market (also including marketing and advertising modules).<\/p>\n
Promoting cooperative learning<\/h2>\n
Learning the basics of project management by having a simulation of a project is all about promoting cooperative learning \u2013 excellent strategy to enhance student satisfaction with their learning experience and develop teamwork skills. What is critical about project-based language learning (PBL) for language teaching and learning is the way in which activities are highly interactive and integrated. \u00a0While students are practising and developing language skills in the five main language learning areas: reading, writing, speaking, listening, and interaction, they are also developing interpersonal skills such as team work and organization (Dooly & Masats, 2011).<\/p>\n
PBL enables a very natural integration of skills, we find that students are engaged in authentic tasks that require that they read to write, write to speak, listen to write, etc., which leads to meaningful language use and recycling of key vocabulary and grammar forms (Stoller, 2006).<\/p>\n
For getting the first idea of project work and to ease collaboration of project teams, students use online Zoho projects environment which also supports improvement of their relevant IT skills. Besides staying updated on students’ progress, this environment in itself reinforces understanding of project work and acquiring content-knowledge.<\/p>\n
Designing meaningful tasks<\/h2>\n
The majority of the project assignments may be defined as \u201ccollaborative and on-display assignments\u201d \u2013 they are meaningful, demanding efforts and offering problem-tackling and innovative thinking. The whole course includes a lot of content-based oral presentations with peer assessment and discussion. The evident advantage is the subsequent feedback as the oral presentations in the classroom are recorded and uploaded to the e-learning environment of the course.<\/p>\n
There are many advantages of using integrated\u00a0 learning and PBL. Firstly, students\u2019 motivation and content relevance. The main achievement of the project was that the students could see they were synthesizing theoretical and practical knowledge\u00a0 \u0336\u00a0 after each introductory theoretical part and key vocabulary\u00a0 followed an authentic, practical task. Using specific topic-related vocabulary facilitated the development of their content-based competences. It also enabled increasing their specific language knowledge \u2013 language for project work, language of meetings and discussions, extending presentation skills, report writing skills, etc. Student-centred activities developed interpersonal and\u00a0 teamwork competences \u00a0\u0336\u00a0 collaborating and working towards the goal provided\u00a0 new abilities to use English for effective professional communication. It also developed students\u2019 competences of reflection \u2013 making the outcome visible enabled students assess their progress and that of peers, reflect on their work and give feedback.<\/p>\n
Throughout the project there was peer interaction, teacher feedback and support which helped the students be more engaged and not to lose their enthusiasm. The end result was an authentic experience of project work and\u00a0 awareness of what integrated\u00a0 teaching really signifies.<\/p>\n
Preparing students for future careers<\/h2>\n
Study evidence shows that learners have to be challenged and motivated in order to transform information, solve problems, understand and discover a new meaning. The goal of using integrated learning, cooperative learning or project based learning is not the strategy or method in itself, but the results we get. The results achieved indicate that using CLIL and PBL strategies could be helpful in developing students\u2019 skills needed in their future career, providing them with the experiences related to content and language knowledge integration.<\/p>\n
New approaches have challenged teachers who have to reconsider their teaching practices and design purposeful learning activities for students. As motivation is the key theme for language learning, a deeper emphasis should be laid on good task and materials design, on developing students\u2019 metacognitive skills how to cooperate effectively in groups, solve problems, discuss, reflect, and discover new meanings.<\/p>\n
References<\/h2>\n
Coyle, D., Hood, P., Marsh, D. 2010. Content and Language Integrated Learning. Oxford: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n
Dooly, M., Masats,D. 2011. Closing the loop between theory and praxis: new models in EFL teaching. ELT Journal Volume 65\/January, pp.42 -51.<\/p>\n
Stoller, F. 2006. Establishing a theoretical foundation for project-based learning in second and foreign language contexts. In G. H. Beckett & P. C. Miller (Eds.), Project-based second and foreign language education: Past, present, and future (pp. 19\u201340). Greenwich, Connecticut: Information Age Publishing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reet Soosaar Lecturer in English, MA University of Tartu, P\u00e4rnu College, Estonia reet.soosaar@ut.ee Urn-address: http:\/\/urn.fi\/urn:nbn:fi:jamk-issn-2343-0281-8 Abstract High youth unemployment is the challenge facing today’s young people. Many universities feel the need to prepare students for a new reality and try to facilitate the process of acquiring entrepreneurial skills. This article sets out to emphasize the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[185],"tags":[41,43,40,42],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-collaborative-skills","tag-content-based-competences","tag-entrepreneurial-spirit","tag-project-based-learning"],"acf":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/verkkolehdet.jamk.fi\/languageteachingtomorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}