Community-Based Project: Taking Care of Our Environment

Abstract

The combination of language and content is the principal emphasis in the English teaching of International Relations program at Universidad del Norte. In order to maximize students’ performance in this approach, project work is assigned. Project work enhances students’ language skills (Stoller, 2006) and is a useful tool to help students develop different competences, such as research, collaborative, linguistic and cultural competence. “The Environmental campaign” is a community-based project that is carried out at Universidad del Norte with fifth semester students of International Relations in the Technology, Environment and Progress subject. The main objective of this project is to raise awareness of the importance of taking care of our environment. This project gives learners the opportunity to simultaneously get involved in social community projects and develop their language skills. For seven weeks, students plan, prepare, design, carry out and present their campaigns. The steps, follow-ups, process, constraints, and results are the main aspects to be shown in this paper.