introduction

This article introduces the requirements of the "Compulsory Education English Curriculum Standards (2022 Edition)" for middle school English teaching, emphasizing the importance of cultivating students' core competencies, including language ability, cultural awareness, thinking quality, and learning ability. The Curriculum Standards advocate for 7th to 9th grade students to engage in comprehensive English practice activities, which aim to enhance their 21st century core skills such as creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration through project-based learning. However, there are problems with project-based learning in junior high school English teaching, such as teachers' lack of planning for the number of projects and a lack of substantial correlation between projects and unit teaching. To address these issues, the author suggests implementing project-based learning based on theme relevance and suggests implementing two to three projects per semester to implement the "double reduction" policy and ensure project quality.

The connotation, principles, and stages of project-based learning

Project based learning is a teaching method in which students explore real problems and form works. Its core lies in students' research on open-ended problems and the development of creative solutions. Emphasize that project-based learning should be integrated with regular classes in a "dual track" manner, where teachers establish a connection between projects and teaching content, and students transfer and apply the knowledge, skills, and strategies acquired in regular classes to projects. The principles of project-based learning include focusing on textbook and thematic relevance, where thematic relevance refers to integrating units with thematic relevance points to construct project-based learning projects. The process of project-based learning includes determining the number of projects, initiating projects, implementing projects, disclosing results, and evaluating projects, aiming to promote the systematic and structured development of students' knowledge and skills through this path.

Implementation of project-based learning and regular courses in parallel

Elaborated in detail the implementation path of project-based learning and regular courses' dual track approach in junior high school English teaching. Firstly, based on the eighth grade second volume of the People's Education Press English, the author identified two project themes and integrated relevant units into projects. Each project lasted for two weeks and was conducted in groups of four. Secondly, the author emphasizes the importance of setting driving questions. Taking Project 2 as an example, the driving questions are set as "How to design a promotional brochure for a city?" and decomposed into two sub projects. Subsequently, the author proposed to determine project-based learning objectives guided by core competencies and designed evaluation indicators corresponding to the project objectives. In the implementation of the project, the author emphasized the importance of exploring textbooks, linking projects, consolidating foundations, applying what has been learned, as well as strategy penetration and literacy transfer. Finally, the author discussed the importance of publicly disclosing achievements and evaluating projects, including the form of achievement disclosure, the promotion of growth through achievement display, the orientation of evaluation towards learning goals, the promotion of optimization through excellent resources, and teachers' self-evaluation and reflection. Through these specific implementation steps, the author demonstrates how to effectively integrate project-based learning with regular classes in junior high school English teaching.

conclusion

Project based learning in junior high school English teaching effectively cultivates students' core competencies by creating real learning situations and a "learning by doing" framework. Teachers need to understand the connotation, principles, and implementation stages of project-based learning, and combine them with curriculum standards to deeply explore the value of projects in textbooks, achieve the dual line and complementary advantages of regular classes and project-based learning, and enhance students' ability to solve practical problems in English.