Have you heard of Project-Based Language Learning?
Project-Based Learning (PBL) can be defined as a "teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge" (from PBLWorks).
In the context of language learning, the National Foreign Language Research Center describes Project-Based Language Learning (PBLL) as a "transformative learning experience designed to engage language learners with real-world issues and meaningful target language use through the construction of products that have an authentic purpose and that are shared with an audience that extends beyond the instructional setting."
Okay... so what?
As I mentioned in my About Me page, I attended a Project-Based high school, and it was an incredibly formative and overwhelmingly positive experience for me! PBL taught me what it means to want to learn, to always be curious, to embody quality... to care. As a teacher, this is the exact same attitude I hope to instill in my students.
Today, as I enter UHM's master's program in Second Language Studies, I find myself returning to PBLL like an old friend every time discussions of how to best support language learners pop up. When talks of student interest and engagement, authenticity, community engagement, social development, peer feedback, media literacy, and 21st century skills come up, I always land on the same thought... "PBLL could fill that hole in a heartbeat!" (I may be biased, but as a product of a successful PBL program, I'd argue that's a good reason to trust me). I am now becoming increasingly interested in pursuing PBLL as an area of focus for my degree while weaving its practices into my future career as an English language teacher. For now, the best I can do is share what information is available out there about PBLL — and even better, I can show you what successful PBL practices look like through personal examples of my own. Please enjoy!
A Brief History of PBL and PBLL
The origins of true Project-Based Learning are often attributed to the works of John Dewey and his pupil, William Heard Kilpatrick. While many are familiar with Dewey's philosophy of a democratic, student-centered classroom that encourages meaningful exploration in authentic contexts, his successor was the first to introduce The Project Method (Kilpatrick, 1918). The reserach paradigm that emerged from the works of Jean Piaget, including the theory of Construc- tivism — or the idea that learners construct new understandings and knowledge through experience and social discourse — also rest at the foundation of modern PBL (Sjøberg, 2010). Today, PBL curriculums and schools continue to flourish around the world (including the global New Tech Network, and many K-12 schools across Hawai'i).
As more and more research highlights the importance of engagement, authenticity, feedback, reflection, and social participation in successful L2 acquisition, it's no wonder that project-based language learning is gaining renewed attention in modern pedagogy. Organizations such as the National Foreign Language Research Center and the Department of Defense's Language Flagship now work to educate, support, and uplift teachers in their goals to implement PBLL in their classrooms.
But what, exactly, does the successful implementation of PBLL look like?
The Pillars of PBLL
Teaching resources online love to condense big ideas down into fun little graphics, and PBL is no exception — so before I start explaining, see what you can make of this:
Depending on who you are, some points may stand out as especially important, and some may be unclear. But in summary, the secret to PBL's success lies in its recipe; all gold-standard projects center around a driving question, a final product, sustained inquiry, student voice & choice, peer feedback, and reflection. PBLL goes further to situate language at its core to "provide a framework for integrating multiple aspects of proficiency into a single, powerful path" (Montgomery, 2018 pdf 2). A successful project naturally provides learners with opportunities to use all three modes of communication: interpretive, interpersonal, and presentational. Authentic aspects of culture, along with the learners' personal interests, are interwoven into the fabric of the project.
Based on my experiences, I am especially grateful for the hard and soft skills that PBL taught me — in tandem with my oral/written Spanish language production, these hard skills included planning, research, analyzing and synthesizing data, aesthetic design, contrasting, justifying alternatives, and digital literacy. In terms of communicative and soft skills, I learned about self-reflection, feedback giving and receiving, time management, patience, self-reliance, public speaking confidence, and how to interact appropriately with partners in my wider community.
To help teachers design high-quality projects, the NFLRC created the Product Square, which helpfully organizes your brainstorming mess into a clear, effective project idea (created by Liliana López, 2015). Here are three examples of Product Squares I created for hypothetical projects in March of 2025 (click each one to enlarge and read in a new tab):
PBLL Elements for Success: My Works
Upon reflection, I believe that there is a foundational set of project elements that must fit together in order for a project unit to succeed; this includes a driving question, a group contract, Knows & NTKs, critical friends, community partners, a final product, and reflection. To find out more about what each of these puzzle pieces entail, I've included authentic examples below that I helped create during my four years at a project-based high school. Click any image to view their full, multi-page documents in a new tab!
Project description: Cancer Awareness, BioLit 2017, Mrs. Hittner and Mrs. Monaghan.
A driving question or problem is essential in a project-based language learning curriculum because it provides focus, purpose, and relevance to student inquiry. It challenges learners to think critically and solve real-world problems, fostering deeper engagement and meaningful learning beyond rote memorization.
A driving question usually follows the following format: How can we, as ((role)), ((project idea)) so that ((outcome)).
Examples:
How can we as detectives tell a story using evidence so that we can help solve a crime?
How can we as cultural experts create a travel guide to help visitors experience our city like a local?
How can we as authors create story books in our target language so that we can teach others about a folk legend from our culture?
How can we as government workers design a survival language kit for someone moving to a new country?
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Project description: La Vida en una Piñata, Spanish II 2017, Mrs. Jung.
I don't see group contracts mentioned often in PBL materials, but I believe it's crucial at the start of every single project. Contracts that are negotiated by the group are helpful because it sets clear expectations for collaboration, accountability, and communication among team members. It helps prevent conflicts by outlining roles, responsibilities, and procedures for decision-making, ensuring a more productive and respectful group dynamic.
It also outlines a 'firing process,' including verbal and written warning, that give students the power to remove disruptive members from the team--this helps prevent students from feeling "trapped" in a group with bad group members, while providing the accused member the chance to defend themselves using proper documentation.
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Project description: Historias de los Libros, Spanish II 2018, Mrs. Jung.
Knows and Need-to-Knows (NTKs) are an important step in every successful project. They first come at the onset of a project after the driving question, expectations, rubric, past examples etc. are first revealed; students are given a chance to compile everything they KNOW (encourage noticing of important expectations in the project) and NTKs (questions remaining that must be answered in order to create the highest-quality public product possible). Knows and NTKs help students see how they will 'chip away' at a seemingly large, obscure project piece by piece.
In a language learning context, NTKs should target project intent and procedure, logistics, needed linguistic knowledge, required technical skills, etc. NTKs are meant to be returned to frequently throughout the project to see which questions can be answered, which are in progress, and which still remain; this helps maintain sustained inquiry.
Click the picture to the left to see the Knows and NTKs that my group generated authentically for a Spanish children's book project.
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"Critical friends" is one name for the peer feedback process utilized by PBL. Feedback should be provided before the final steps of the project arise so that learners can receive and implement feedback in order to create a higher quality final product. At my school, we used the "Likes, Wonders, Next Steps" model to provide kind yet useful feedback.
You start out with what you liked in their demonstration (which can include qualities of the final product, difficult linguistic items used, etc.), then move on to things you wonder about (e.g. "I wonder about your introduction, as it doesn't really catch the listeners attention"). To make the feedback actionable, you provide next steps (e.g. "One next step would be to include a hook or shocking fact at the start of your introduction to make it more impactful"). At first, this process can be uncomfortable, but after four years of this process, I've gained a lot of confidence and an eye for detail when giving my peers feedback! It also has helped me learn how to take feedback well and think critically about what elements I agree with, and what elements are not useful or given in good faith; in the end, I never take things personally, and instead view feedback as a helpful step towards a quality final product.
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Project description: Logo-tastic, Graphics II 2019, Mrs. Gregg.
Community partners should be included whenever possible in projects because they connect classroom learning to real-world contexts, providing authentic audiences, feedback, and expertise; and in the case of language learning, community partners can act as an impactful language 'expert' that students may feel motivated to model their speech after. Their involvement increases student motivation and relevance, while also helping learners develop practical skills and a sense of social responsibility in their communities.
For example, the logo shown is from a real graphic design project we did in 2019; we were tasked to choose a local business and redesign their logo, with the final product including an in-depth logo use guide and presentation to our community partners. This project was so successful that our partner company (Blue Wing Kennel) ended up using our logo!
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Project description: A Guilded Guide, American Experience 2020, Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Olsen.
The most obvious part of any PBLL curriculum is the final product. The final product is some sort of tangible item(s) that represent the cumulative efforts and gained knowledge/skills of the group at the end of a project unit. This final project is usually presented to their peers and to their community, helping students develop public speaking skills and a professional, confident attitude while sharing their works with others.
I especially like creating final products because they act as landmarks that I can look back on and feel immense pride in what my group and I were able to create. Even just for this page, I've had so much fun perusing my old files and remembering all the great projects and high quality final products I was able to contribute to. For example, if you click the image on the right, you can browse a full magazine that my group made that was based off of 1920s era topics. Even though it's not perfect, I am still quite proud of it to this day, and it remains in my memory as a highly meaningful and enjoyable project.
Click the images below to peruse some other final products that I still feel proud of today (can you tell I wanted to be a graphic designer!):
Project description: A Guilded Guide, American Experience 2020, Mr. Hawkins and Mr. Olsen.
Finally, reflection plays an important role in PBL, as it allows students to process what they've learned, evaluate their progress, and make connections between their experiences and academic goals. It fosters metacognition and personal growth, helping learners internalize knowledge and improve future performance.
The reflections generated by students also acts as helpful information for the teacher, who can address points of friction noted by the students in future interations of the project.
Click the image on the left to see an authentic example of my self reflections after a project in 2019.
Further Reading
Beckett, G. H. (2024). A paradigm shift for language education: Project-based learning and teaching. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032700205.
Kilpatrick, W. H. (1918). The project method. Teachers College Record, 19(4), 319–36.
Larmer, J., Mergendoller, J., & Boss, S. (2015). Setting the standard for project based learning. ASCD. Click here to access book.
National Foreign Language Research Center. (n.d.). Project-Based language learning. NFLRC. https://nflrc.hawaii.edu/pbll/.
