Empowering students with authentic tasks to learn English beyond the classroom: a club-based model

ABSTRACT

English learners in EFL contexts where grammar-based instruction is still dominant often lack opportunities to use the target language both within and outside the classroom. In 2010, we initiated a club-based approach to facilitate students’ learning beyond the classroom. It focused on meaningful communication, authentic tasks, student agency, community service, and learner leadership to help students develop their English ability while sharpening their twenty-first century skills for both personal and professional development. In this innovative practice paper, we will present the context, rationales and implementation of this student-led model so that other educators can learn from and adapt our innovation for their own contexts to solve the teaching and learning problems in their communities.

KEYWORDS:

• English club model
• self-regulated learning
• learning beyond classroom
• innovation
• interaction hypothesis
• tasks

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Huy Phung

Huy Phung has been a language educator for more than 10 years. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in Second Language Studies at University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. His research interests include task-based interaction, technology-mediated communication, language learning motivation, and language assessment.

Nhi Tran

Nhi Tran is doing research at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research interests include quality assurance in education, education policies, and foreign language learning and teaching.

Diem Hoang

Diem Hoang has been an EFL instructor at Thai Nguyen University (Vietnam) for more than 15 years. Her interests include technology-enhanced language learning and teaching, English learning beyond classroom, and teacher training. She earned her Master of Science in Instructional Technology from Lehigh University (USA) with the Fulbright Scholarship for Vietnamese Students, and her PhD in Education at Edith Cowan University (Australia).