Effectiveness of Project-Based Learning in Improving Chinese EFL Learners’ Oral Communicative Competence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study investigates the effectiveness of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in improving oral communicative competence among Chinese Business English majors. Using a quasi-experimental design, 62 participants were divided into a PBL experimental group and a traditional instruction control group. Pre- and post-test speaking performances were assessed using standardized oral tests scored by trained raters. Additionally, an attitude questionnaire was administered to evaluate learners’ perceptions of PBL and its impact on soft skills development. Results showed that students in the PBL group made significant improvements in fluency, vocabulary use, and communication confidence, while the control group showed no significant gains. Moreover, learners expressed positive attitudes toward PBL, emphasizing its role in enhancing not only language proficiency but also essential soft skills such as collaboration, creativity, and self-management. These findings support the integration of PBL into Business English curricula as an effective pedagogical approach that fosters real-world language use and prepares students for workplace communicative competence.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".