INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF PROJECT-BASED LEARNING ON STUDENTS' ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS ENGLISH LESSON

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of project-based learning on students' academic achievement and attitudes towards English lesson of 9th grade students. The research was carried out in 2010-2011 education-instruction year in a high school in Nigde, Turkey. Totally 60 students in two different classes in the 9th grade of this school participated in the study. The pre- and post-test control group research model was used in this study. The data obtained in the study were analysed by the computer programme SPSS 17.0. The arithmetic means and standard deviations were calculated for each group. In order to test the significance between the groups, the independent samples t-test was used. The significance level was taken as .05 in the research. The results of the research showed a significant difference between the attitude scores of the experiment group and the control group. On the other hand, it was also found out that project-based learning was more effective in the positive development of the students' academic achievement levels. At the end of the research, it was revealed that the students who were educated by project-based learning was more successful and had higher attitude levels towards the lesson than the students who were educated by the instruction based on student textbooks.

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