The PBL approach in an EFL Setting: Maximizing Students’ Engagement and Humanizing their Experiences

Communicating in English brings about a number of challenges for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. Such challenges remain unaddressed and unresolved within the traditional classroom settings, which are often dominated by intense guidance and instructions. The aim of this chapter is to address, discuss, and research project-based learning (PBL) as an effective pedagogical approach capable of prompting higher education students’ EFL capabilities – particularly English writing skills – in an engaging, student-centered manner that connects to their real-life experiences and develops a range of their generic skills. The PBL approach was designed, integrated, and implemented within the curriculum of the intensive English course (ENGL 101) delivered at Phoenicia University. Over a semester, 120 students across all four sections actively engaged, in groups, in PBL tasks, where they were required to identify problems in their community, propose solutions to these problems, and develop action plans to ensure that such solutions are sustainable. A mixed method approach that comprised a questionnaire (pre- and post-test) and semi-structured interviews was implemented. This chapter found that the adopted PBL method was very effective in promoting students’ engagement, ownership, and confidence in EFL. Additionally, this chapter showcased the power of PBL as a pedagogical device in humanizing EFL students’ experiences and education and provoking them to build their citizenship and agency in tackling problems and issues of relevance to them and their communities rather than being passive sufferers or observers of such problems and issues.