A PARTICIPATORY CASE STUDY INTO LEARNERS’ DIFFICULTIES AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF DOING PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ESP COURSE

Abstract

This participatory case study explores learners’ difficulties and proposes some recommendations for more effectively doing project-based learning of English for Economics and Business Study II, a 15-week ESP course at the School of Foreign Languages, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Vietnam. Data were collected through a focus-group interview with six veteran course participants with varying grade range. As a result of theme-based coding and analysis, major findings reveal that learners hardly could achieve the approach’s learning outcomes of key content knowledge and real-life skills because of some difficulties including learners’ poor success skills, lack of prior knowledge, limitation of references, and unauthentic assessment. Furthermore, from the participants’ perspectives, some suggestions for learners, teachers and policy makers are made; pedagogical implications are also discussed.