To study the effect of project based learning on English language writing skills of grade 8 students

Project Based Learning (PBL) is perceived as an effective instruction method that can engage and motivate middle grade students. It is a student centred instruction model advocating constructive view of reality and promoting authentic nature of task and audience. PBL is a three decade old concept in the area (EFL/ESL), moreover its empirical researches are scare and almost nil in the context of Pakistan. The study explored the effect of PBL on the writing skills of Grade 8 students in two private schools of Karachi. The study adopted a quasi-experiment (pre-test-Intervention-posttest) design. The study employed a sample of 47 students out of which 28 students were part of Intervention Group (IG) and 19 students belonged to the control group (CG). During the intervention, IG was taught with the PBL as an instruction method while CG was taught with the Traditional Instruction method (TM). Scores on WAM-R during pre-test presented low and similar (p\u3e0.05) ability of the entire sample on narrative writing. However, participants of IG showed significant improvement (p=0.00, r=0.5) inferring a prominent effect of PBL on the writing skills of the students. Analysis at the lower cognitive domains revealed improvement in the performance of both the groups inferring both TM and PBL facilitated students. On the contrary, IG showed 70% improvement in higher cognitive domains demonstrating a clear edge over their CG counterparts (15% improvement). The analysis directs a content focus (rather than cognition focus) approach of language learning in our context. Though, students receive a lot of exposure on various elements of language such as punctuation, verb tenses etc.; they do not receive sufficient time to apply all the language mechanics in the form of their own writings during the academic year. It is evident from the results that the IG was able to produce better results as it was provided with ample opportunities to recall, understand, and apply and even create a coherently written text using their rhetoric knowledge. The study further recommended utilizing application of PBL as an interdisciplinary instructional approach