Speaking and writing are the productive skills. Production processes control how well the child can reproduce the model’s responses.

There are three basic reasons why it is a good idea to give students speaking tasks which provoke them to use all and any language at their command:

1. Rehearsal: getting students to have a free discussion gives them a chance to rehearse having discussion in project work.

2. Feedback: speaking tasks where students are trying to use all and any language they know provides feedback for both teacher and students. Teacher can see how well their class is doing and what language problems they are having (that is a good reason for project lessons); students can also see how easy they find a particular kind of speaking and what they need to improve.

3. Engagement: good speaking activities can and should be highly motivating. Many speaking tasks (role-playing, discussion, problem-solving) can be used in the project work [6, 88]

There are four types of speaking activity:

information- gap

survey

discussion

role-play

One popular information-gap activity is called “Describe and Draw”. It has many of the elements of an ideal speaking activity.

One way of provoking conversation and opinion exchange is to get students to conduct questionnaires and surveys. If the students plan these questionnaires themselves, the activity becomes even more useful.

Role-play activities are those where students are asked to imagine that they are in different situations and act accordingly. Teachers can organise discussion sessions in their classroom, too.

Writing is a basic language skill, just as important as speaking, listening, and reading. Students need to know how to write letters, how to put written reports together, how to reply to advertisement – and increasingly, how to write using electronic media. Part of teacher’s job is to give students that skill.

There are four writing sequences:

postcard

altering dictation

newspaper headlines/articles

report writing [6,81-83]

Another factor which can determine teacher’s choice of writing task is the students’ interests. Teacher’s decisions, though, will be based on how much language the students know, what their interests are, and what teacher thinks will not only be useful for them but also motivate them as well.

To sum up it is possible to say that while project work all language skills should be trained. So, speaking activities may well form one part of a much longer sequence which includes reading or listening and, after the activity, study work. The teaching of reading is intimately bound up with the teaching of writing: the one provides the model for the other. Writing is a basic language skill, just as important as speaking, listening and reading. Listening is a skill and any help teachers can give students in performing that skill will help them to be better listeners.

Practical Use of the Project Work “My Body”

The aim of the practical application of the project work “My Body” was to investigate the possibility to increase the student’s interest in learning the English language, to develop all language skills and improve knowledge of young learners.

This part of the work passed through certain stages:

questionnaire to study the students’ types of the intelligence;

selection tasks and activities for project work “My Body”;

practical implementation of the project material;

analysis of the results obtained.

The practical application of the material was carried out from 1^st October 2003 till 17^th October 2003. It was realized in Jēkabpils Secondary School No2 with 4-th formers, three hours of the English language a week. The group consisted of 23 students.