VOL. 3 (2024)

ISSN 2952-2013 pp. 59-75

https://doi.org/10.33776/linguodidactica.v3.8119

Communicative English Language Skills Improvement

Programme (CELSIP) through Challenge-Based

Learning: SDG 4 at stage

Programa de mejora de competencias comunicativas en inglés (CELSIP)

a través del aprendizaje basado en retos: ODS 4 a escena

Mónica Tudela Mahiques

Universidad de Valencia

María Alcantud-Díaz

Universidad de Valencia

Resumen:

El imparable avance de la tecnología combinado con

las circunstancias provocadas por la pasada crisis sani-

taria ha propiciado nuevas formas de aprender y ense-

ñar ILE (inglés como lengua extranjera). Este estudio de

caso tiene como objetivo crear una versión adaptada

del ya existente Programa de Mejora de Habilidades Co-

municativas del Idioma Inglés (CELSIP) para Educación

Secundaria e implementarlo utilizando un enfoque ba-

sado en retos para involucrar al alumnado de manera

más activa en su proceso de aprendizaje. Este programa

multimodal fue diseñado para fomentar el aprendizaje

autónomo proporcionando al alumnado herramientas

gratuitas para estar más expuestos al idioma target y que

puedan mejorar las habilidades de recepción y produc-

ción oral mientras responden a sus necesidades e inte-

reses personales. Para la realización de este estudio, el

alumnado trabajó de forma autónoma durante el perio-

do del reto, reﬂexión y autoevaluación de su progreso de

aprendizaje a través de las herramientas proporcionadas

para tal ﬁn. Los resultados indicaron mayores niveles de

motivación, mejor pronunciación en la lengua de destino

(competencia plurilingüe) y adquisición de nuevo voca-

bulario.

Palabras claves:

Aprendizaje autónomo; Aprendizaje basado en retos;

Educación de calidad; Habilidades comunicativas.

Fecha de aceptación:14 de marzo de 2024

Abstract:

The unstoppable progress of technology combined with

the circumstances caused by the past health crisis has

led to new ways of learning and teaching EFL (English as

a Foreign Language). This case study aims to create an

adapted version of the already existing Communicative

English Language Skills Improvement Programme (CEL-

SIP) for Secondary Education and to implement it using

a Challenge-Based approach to involve students more

actively and to a greater extent in their learning process.

This multimodal programme was designed to encour-

age autonomous learning by providing students with

free tools to be more exposed to the target language

and to improve students’ oral reception and production

skills while responding to their personal needs and in-

terests. For this study to be carried out, students worked

autonomously during the challenge period, performed

a challenge and reﬂected and self-assessed their learn-

ing progress through the tools provided to that end. The

ﬁndings reported higher levels of motivation, better pro-

nunciation in the target language (plurilingual compe-

tence) and new vocabulary acquisition.

Keywords:

Autonomous learning; Challenge-Based Learning;

Communicative skills; Quality Education.

Fecha de recepción: 14 de enero de 2024

Communicative English Language Skills

Improvement Programme (CELSIP) through

Challenge-Based Learning: SDG 4 at stage

Programa de mejora de competencias

comunicativas en inglés (CELSIP) a través del

aprendizaje basado en retos: ODS 4 a escena

Mónica Tudela Mahiques

Universidad de Valencia

María Alcantud-Díaz

Universidad de Valencia

Contacto:

maria.alcantud@uv.es

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Our lives changed as soon as the COVID-19 disease was declared a pandemic by the World Health

Organization. In Spain, the education system was affected, as in every country, since the constant

conﬁnement of both students and teachers has led to a combination of face-to-face and online

teaching. In this sense, the lack of resources in the educational centres and some students have

been notably exposed. Furthermore, students are presented with content-centred assignments that

lack a real-world context and opportunities for active participation. The issue is that these assign-

ments often fail to engage students.

Taking these factors into account and given that learning English is largely based on being exposed

to the target language, the present case study responds to the need for proposing alternatives to

the traditional teaching methodology in the subject of English as a Foreign Language (EFL from

now and on) in Secondary Education. In this particular case, it proposes to adopt the aforemen-

tioned programme to improve the oral reception and production skills of secondary students while

responding to their personal needs and interests. Additionally, this multimodal programme aims to

motivate students, as the original CELSIP (Alcantud-Díaz & Soler-Pardo, 2022, 2023; Soler-Pardo &

Alcantud-Díaz, 2020), but it intends to go further since it includes the use of a new perspective of the

Challenge-Based Learning approach to engaging them. With this project, we aim to offer a new EFL

learning view that promotes autonomy and critical thinking among students whilst also encourag-

ing learn-to-learn and digital key competencies (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Professional,

2015). In the following pages, we present a review of the literature ﬁrstly of the CELSIP and its con-

nection with autonomous learning, and then of the Challenge-Based approach used.

The theoretical and practical relevance of this research has been scarcely found on the topic, which

provides this work with an important opportunity to try to ﬁll that gap. This case study is mainly based

on the pilot programme called the Communicative English Language Improvement Programme

(CELSIP) and their research on the programme (Alcantud-Díaz & Soler-Pardo, 2022, 2023). To im-

plement the adapted CELSIP in Secondary Education, the Challenge-Based Learning (ChBL from

now on) approach has been used. To that end, a procedure to adapt ChBL to the EFL class was also

designed.

This study hopes to answer the research question that arose as the starting point of this work: Can

the CELSIP be implemented in Secondary Education to improve students’ motivation and oral skills?

After stating our hypothesis, the objectives of the study were threefold: ﬁrstly, to design an adapted

version of the CELSIP for Secondary Education based on the students’ age, level and interests; sec-

ondly, to implement the adapted CELSIP to improve students’ oral reception and production skills

while working autonomously and ﬁnally, to increase students’ motivation through a Challenge-Based

Learning approach to make them more engaged in their learning process.

Given the current sometimes-inappropriate implementation of Information and Communication

Technologies (ICT) and the fact that traditional teaching and learning strategies are becoming in-

creasingly ineffective with a new generation of secondary students, we, as educators, must help our

students to be active, reﬂective, critical and autonomous learners. Moreover, our commitment to

education must follow the guidelines of the United Nations (UN) and its Sustainable Development

Goals (SDG), especially SDG 4 (quality education) towards guaranteeing education for everyone

1. Introduction

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without leaving anyone behind. Thus, this case study intends to present a different, inclusive and

motivating perspective of EFL teaching for millennials.

The Communicative English Language Skills Improvement Programme, henceforth CELSIP, was de-

signed in 2018 by Alcantud Díaz and Soler Pardo from the Department of Didactics of Language and

Literature (English area) from the Teaching Faculty of the University of Valencia (Spain). The CELSIP

was designed as an additional programme for their students enrolled in the subjects Foreign Lan-

guage I and II (English) (Alcantud-Díaz & Soler-Pardo, 2022, 2023).

The main focus of the program was to help students expand their communicative competencies in

the English language while encouraging and motivating them. Following this train of thought, the

CELSIP provides a compilation of tools, resources and suggestions based on students’ interests to

help them create an environment where they could be exposed to the target language whilst enjoy-

ing and being aware of their learning process.

The CELSIP is divided into three main parts: (1) tools and guidelines, (2) the student’s logbook for

self-reﬂection and (3) the self-assessment part. Regarding the tools and guidelines, it contains eleven

different sections: (1) Our best TV series to learn English, (2) Films and popcorn! (3) Listen to music

& sing along as if you were the Grammy winner! (4) Useful Apps to improve your English (5) Why not

(board) games? (6) Just read it! (7) Time for audiobooks, (8) Talking opportunities, (9) Videopportu-

nities, (10) The news, talk shows & other educational Websites in English and (11) Get subscribed!

Each section contains different tips and suggestions to guide students when using any of the re-

sources. The criteria for the selection of the content of each section was based on the authors’ ex-

perience teaching and working with students from all educational levels together with an in-depth

research process. Concerning the student’s follow-up logbook for self-reﬂection, it was included to

help students to be autonomous and independent learners while being collaborative more than

ever since the main aim of reﬂective learning is to help students to be critical about their own knowl-

edge. Finally, the last section is devoted to making students assess themselves more objectively. The

ﬁnal part is composed of a list of CEFR (2018) descriptors (can do) organized in these categories:

(i) reception, (ii) production, (iii) interaction, (iv) mediation, (v) communicative language competen-

cies, and (vi) plurilingual and pluricultural competences. The descriptors of the original CELSIP were

related to B2+/C1 as this programme was aimed at students of higher education Degrees. These

resources were aimed at helping both teachers and students to self-assess and evaluate their pro-

gress objectively.

To implement the adapted CELSIP in Secondary Education, the approach chosen was the Chal-

lenge-Based Approach (ChBL) which might become a potential and engaging methodology since

challenges are becoming popular among teenagers in social media.

Currently, technology and the Internet constitute an instant way of accessing information for students

who become informal learners (Apple, 2011). In 2015, the Pew Research Center found that 92% of

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. The Communicative English Language

Skills Improvement Programme (CELSIP)

2.2. Challenge-Based Learning (ChBL)

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teens go online daily and that 24 per cent are on almost constantly. Additionally, social media have

become increasingly popular, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic where many social move-

ments took place to support each other, and also, to have fun. Within this context, the so-called

challenges became increasingly popular. Since traditional teaching approaches do not seem to be

effective at engaging teenagers and challenges have become so popular, why not use challenges

to teach English? A challenge is deﬁned by Tecnológico de Monterrey (2016) as an activity, task or

situation that involves learners in a stimulus to be carried out. Following this line, Dewey (1938) held

that it is the responsibility of the educator to present students with interesting problems to engage

learners and arouse their curiosity and natural desire to learn. Moreover, as stated by Johnson et al

., (2009) students are aware of the world’s problems, so it is time to try new approaches that connect

classwork to the real world.

Challenge-based learning was ﬁrst mentioned as used primarily at Vanderbilt University (Birol et al.,

2002) and then developed by the company Apple in 2008 as a part of a collaborative project called

Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (Nichols & Cator, 2008). It is deﬁned as “an engaging, multidiscipli-

nary approach that starts with standards-based content and lets students leverage the technology

they use in their daily lives to solve complex, real-world problems” (Apple, 2011, p. 3). It mirrors

21st-century education by combining formal and informal learning with other emerging modalities

and strategies that have new understandings of education as a ﬂexible, open, decentralised, col-

laborative and co-created space (Hermann et al., 2019). Moreover, through ChBL, we can address

multiple curricular content and transversal skills (Tecnológico de Monterrey, 2016).

ChBL is suitable for all kinds of learners since challenges can be adapted to different ages and con-

texts of learning. In ChBL, teachers become collaborators in learning. Their role is to provide guid-

ance, support, checkpoints and the right tools to students to help them succeed in their work while

new ways of learning (Nichols & Cator, 2008). Nevertheless, as Nichols et al., state “it is vital to pro-

vide space and time to make mistakes, follow false paths, and course correct” (2016, p. 17). Students

become autonomous learners who learn to learn which is one of the key competencies that citizens

of the European Union must acquire to achieve full personal, social and professional development

(Ministerio de Educación y Formación Professional, 2015).

Regarding the different phases of ChBL, The Challenge Based Learning User Guide states it is divid-

ed into three interconnected phases: Engage, Investigate and Act (Nichols et al., p. 11). Nonethe-

less, according to Apple (2010, pp. 9-15), ChBL can be grouped into ﬁve interrelated stages: (i) The

big idea, (ii) Setting the foundation for the solution, (iii) Identifying a solution, (iv) Implementation

and evaluation, (v) Results and reﬂections. In terms of assessment, ChBL has a wide variety of assess-

ment opportunities. In turn, reﬂective learning is also encouraged during and after the challenge.

Student reﬂections can be via text, audio recording, or video recording (Apple, 2011). In this sense,

Challenge-Based Learning integrates students’ autonomy, the use of new technologies and stu-

dents’ real world, even more accentuated in times of pandemic as will be described in the following

section.

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Online education has been making ground with the growth of ICT (Information and Communications

technologies). The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the shortcomings of the educational sector in

terms of resources and training for online learning and teaching. Nevertheless, there is a wide range

of virtual resources that enable us to continue teaching effectively. As Soler-Pardo and Alcantud-Díaz

(2020) say, online teaching is not always a matter of major causes since there are teachers who teach

exclusively online for a variety of reasons.

By adding the use of technology and challenges to online education, we have a more motivating

environment for students since ICTs provide authentic materials, contextualised in real-life environ-

ments, which effectively help to improve EFL communicative competencies (Soler-Pardo & Alcan-

tud-Díaz, 2020). Additionally, ICTs could help to increase exposure to the English language as it

is accessible, free and includes tools that learners use regularly. When learning English, exposure

to the language is important since it could improve pronunciation, ﬂuency, written skills (Atkinson,

2015), grammatical and syntactical structures, phonological processing (Torgesen et al., 1994) and

the acquisition of new vocabulary. Furthermore, as Baltova states “audio-visual material, with its rich

context, is a powerful instructional tool known to have a motivational, attentional, and affective im-

pact in viewers, which in turn facilitates auditory processing” (1994, pp. 510-511). This wealth of

resources constitutes a rich and varied linguistic input that offers the possibility of improving the

learning outcomes of English as a foreign language, not only in virtual classrooms but also in auton-

omous and reﬂective learning contexts (Soler-Pardo & Alcantud-Díaz, 2020).

All these theoretical concepts, together with the theoretical framework in which the original CELSIP was

created, will set the foundations for the design of the adapted CELSIP for Secondary Education. This

adapted programme will try to tackle autonomy, reﬂection, virtual education and new technologies

to give an answer to students’ interests.

The adaptation of the CELSIP for Secondary Education was composed of 9 sections. Regarding the

distribution of the programme:

Part 1. Tools and guidelines: Since the adapted programme was aimed at students with a lower le-

vel of English, explanatory paragraphs were replaced with easier-to-follow instructions including

shorter sentences and keywords highlighted in bold. The idea was to make it more attractive and

easier to follow. Regarding the content, some other suggestions regarding new titles were also

added because they were known to be trendy among Secondary students.

Part 2. Student’s follow-up logbook: A subsection with the challenge proposed to the students

was added. That challenge was related to the modality of the section.

Part 3. Self-assessment: The self-assessment section was created using the Global Scale of English

toolkit and the skills chosen were speaking and listening and the A2/A2+ level. An additional

document was prepared related to B2+/C1 level for students with high abilities in English coping

thus with this kind of attention to diversity.

2.3. Virtual Education, ICT and

Challenge-Based Approach

3. Methods

3.1. CELSIP for Secondary Education design

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The implementation of the CELSIP methodology was carried out during the teacher training at a

public institution – a state high school– located in Spain. 41 participants of the 1st of Bachillerato

took part in the study. The group’s English knowledge general average was standard (A2) in terms

of their educational level. Students had 3 weekly English lessons consisting of 50 minutes for each

lesson.

Taking into account the growth of new technologies and the habits and interests of the students, the

activities were created to be carried out and done by using Smartphones, tablets or laptops, since all

the participants had at least one of those devices. A primary objective of this didactic proposal was

to make the most of the participants’ electronic devices’ regular use to establish new habits that in-

corporated English into their daily free time, activities and hobbies so they could improve their oral

reception and production. Thus, the activities implemented were aimed at teaching English through

multimodal material and ICTs.

A Challenge-Based Learning approach was chosen to implement the adapted CELSIP in a moti-

vational way. Since after having revised the existing literature on ChBL there was not a particular

procedure for the implementation of this methodology in EFL, the authors designed a functional

procedure for Secondary Education. The idea was to combine the three stages presented by Nich-

ols, Cator & Torres (2016) and the ﬁve stages by Apple (2011), described previously, in an attempt

to standardise them. Hence, ﬁrstly, we took Apple’s (1) big idea and (2) essential questions and

together with Nichols et al’s’ “engage” stage, we created a phase called “pre-challenge”. Secondly,

we gathered Apple’s (3) challenge and (4) solution-action stages with the “investigate” stage by

Nichols et al. We called this new phase the “challenge period” in which the challenges took place.

Finally, Apple’s (5) evaluation and assessment were combined with the “act” stage by Nichols et al.,

calling it “post-challenge”. Thus, the procedure for the challenges was as follows: (1) the challenge

explanation and students’ questions (pre-challenge), (2) implementation (challenge period) and (3)

reﬂection, evaluation and self-assessment (post-challenge).

A total of 6 sessions were needed to implement the activities and data gathering. The project was

divided into 3 main parts as depicted in Figure 1, the ﬁrst session was aimed at presenting the

adapted CELSIP and how the activities would be performed (pre-challenge). Sessions 2 and 3 were

devoted to Challenge 1 and sessions 4 and 5 were devoted to Challenge 2. Finally, session 6, the

post-challenge, was designed to assess the students’ challenges. Moreover, this last session was

also aimed at the students’ self-assessment and a ﬁnal evaluation of the project. The materials used

to carry out the implementation were: (i) an initial questionnaire, (ii) a ﬁnal questionnaire, (iii) the

adapted CELSIP, (iv) the parents’ authorization sheet and (v) the self-assessment list.

3.2. Didactic proposal to implement the

adapted CELSIP in Secondary Education

3.2.1. Implementation of the didactic intervention

3.2.2. Timeline of research

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Pre-challenge: presentation of the project

Session 1: The adapted CELSIP was explained. The students were given time to consider their par-

ticipation while the initial questionnaire was handed out. This initial questionnaire provided key and

determinant information to adapt the challenges to students’ tastes and interests. It was a way to

make students participate in their own learning process (Johnson et al., 2009). At the end of the ses-

sion, students who were volunteering to participate in the programme were ﬁnally identiﬁed. Final-

ly, the participants were asked to send an email with the A2 descriptors document before beginning

to work with the programme.

Challenge period: challenges 1 and 2

Session 2: Topic 1, challenge 1 and the logbook were explained. Challenge 1 consisted of students

choosing a song from the adapted CELSIP, researching the lyrics and recording themselves singing

or reading aloud before listening to the song. During the rest of the week, students had to listen

to the chosen song and sing it along. In this way, they were exposed to a model and a comparison

for pronunciation. The students were also encouraged to use the app LyricsTrainig. The work was

autonomous, so they had to be responsible for their learning process. At the end of the challenge

period, the students recorded themselves again to see if they had improved their pronunciation.

Both recordings were sent to the teacher to be assessed.

Session 3: That day was the deadline to submit challenge 1 (two voice recordings and the student’s

logbook) by email. The experience of the ﬁrst challenge and any doubts and problems were also

commented on in this session.

Session 4: During that session, challenge 2 was explained. The participants had to choose a ﬁlm or

TV series and watch it in English following the tips provided in the adapted CELSIP. Since this activity

took more time, two weeks were given to them to work on it. The ﬁrst week was aimed at watching

the ﬁlm or TV series, noting down the vocabulary, choosing a scene for the challenge and writing the

scripts. The second week was aimed at studying the scripts, thinking and planning how to perform

them by creating a TikTok or dubbing a scene. Students were allowed to prepare and accomplish

the performance in pairs or alone. They were also reminded to ﬁll in the logbook as reﬂective work.

Source: own elaboration

Figure 1. Timeline of research

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During those two weeks, the teacher asked them about their process and guided them through the

ﬁnal task during the whole period following Apple’s (2011) and Nichols et al’s (2016) procedures.

Furthermore, students were free to choose any ﬁlm or TV series they liked because we wanted to

create an open framework where students felt ownership and became more involved in their learn-

ing process (Nichols et al., 2016).

Session 5: This session was the deadline for the challenge period, students handed in their tasks: a

video (TikTok or dubbing) and the logbook. Additionally, the experience of challenge 2 was com-

mented on and some questions or addressed problems regarding technical issues uploading the

videos were answered (Apple, 2011).

Post-challenge: assessment and self-assessment

Session 6: This was the last session of the adapted CELSIP implementation. After a week’s analysis

of their tasks with the rubrics created for that purpose, the teacher asked them to ﬁll in the ﬁnal

questionnaire to receive accurate feedback regarding their experience during the programme ex-

perience. A2/A2+ self-assessments were also ﬁlled in again by the students to compare if they felt

an improvement in any of the can-do.

The ﬁrst tools aimed at gathering data were the initial and ﬁnal questionnaires. The initial question-

naire was anonymous, and its main objective was to obtain information about the students’ habits

regarding their exposure to the English language to adapt the challenges to their interests. The ﬁnal

questionnaire, which was also anonymous, provided some information about the students’ experi-

ence after using the programme and carrying out the challenges. The objective was also to know if

the experience had been useful for them, and feedback was requested regarding which elements

would they change or add to improve the programme. Since the questionnaire was anonymous,

the expected outcome was for students to write honestly to determine the real weaknesses and

strengths from their point of view.

The second data-gathering tool was the students’ logbook. It was an important part of the project

as it helped students to be aware of their learning process, a self-assessment, becoming conscious

about their strengths and weaknesses, their improvements, their feelings and their frustrations so

they could overcome them. All the challenges were submitted by email to the teachers: two audios

per participant for challenge 1 and one video per student or pair of students for challenge 2 were

collected.

Thus, two different rubrics were created to assess both challenges. The ﬁrst one was focused on as-

sessing pronunciation after being exposed to the target language, and the second one assessed the

whole video production intending to assess students’ oral skills improvement. Finally, the students’

A2 and B2+ self-assessments were also taken into account.

3.2.3. Data collection and evaluation

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The results gathered with the initial questionnaire were not surprising since, as expected, the students

did not have the habit of integrating English into their daily lives. Even though many of them did not like

the subject of English, they had strong reasons for continuing to study it since it was generally consid-

ered important for their future careers. Moreover, the initial questionnaire was key to changing the initial

idea and adapting the challenges to the students’ preferences. In the ﬁnal questionnaire, the answers

were more elaborate, engaging and with a willingness to help. Additionally, the students were given the

chance to answer in Spanish if they felt more conﬁdent, but the majority used English. Overall, the results

of this research implementation were positive in line with the results gathered by Chanin et al. (2018) and

Cheung et al. (2011).

The students were engaged and motivated and more than half of them felt they had improved their

pronunciation and oral reception through the challenges tips and tools provided in the adapted CELSIP.

They were also much more proactive and at the end of the implementation of the programme, they were

considerably more engaged by using ChBL (Apple, 2011; Chanin et al., 2018).

Challenge 1: Songs and Apps: Both audios (before and after practice) were analysed with a rubric. The

different categories assessed regarding pronunciation are summarized as follows: (i) clarity category

- assessed if students spoke clearly with no breakdowns in communication; (ii) the speed referred to

appropriate pauses; (iii) loudness was the appropriate voice volume which should affect intelligibility;

(iv) ﬂuency was the ability to produce stretches in language with a fairly even tempo; (v) appropriate in-

tonation patterns; (vi) word-level stress; (vii) stress, rhythm and linking; (viii) consonants regarding substi-

tution, omission, clusters properly articulated and linking and (ix) vowels regarding substitution, lengths

and linking.

Participants could choose between singing or reading aloud. 21 out of 36 sang (58%) and 15 read the

lyrics (42%). In general, the results were satisfactory since all categories related to pronunciation were

mainly marked as good and very good. Students imitated the singer’s pronunciation quite well (no one

scored less than acceptable). Nonetheless, some of the participants did not seem to practice as there

was often no discernible difference between both audios. The most revealing struggle was evidenced

by the pronunciation of quite common words whose pronunciation was supposed to be known and

familiar to them such as enough. There were also a few issues of pronunciation with verbs ending in -ed

such as solved or loved. We also observed that those participants who chose to sing had better results

as their mouths adopted the right shapes and moved with the rhythm of the song. Participants were also

supposed to use the App LyricsTraining as learning support during the challenge period. However, only

3 out of 36 mentioned they had used it in their logbooks.

Challenge 2: Films and TV series: During the second challenge, participants had to choose any ﬁlm or

TV series that they enjoyed watching. However, it was compulsory to follow the tips from the adapted

CELSIP, looking for new vocabulary using a dictionary or an App, and practising their favourite dialogue

to perform it. In this case, students were allowed to work in pairs: 16 students worked individually (50%),

and 16 preferred to do it in pairs (50%). The video duration had to last between 30 seconds and 1 minute,

but if it was performed in pairs and it had to last between 1 minute and 1 minute and a half. 25 videos

were collected: 13 TikTok (52%) and 12 dubbings (48%). In the development of this challenge, 4 students

did not send their videos due to a lack of time. The videos were sent by email to be analyzed following

4. Results and Discussion

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the same rubric. The different categories were assessed using the rubric created. The categories were (1)

execution, (2) content and vocabulary, (3) ﬂuency and pronunciation, (4) originality, (5) grammar and (6)

video and sound quality. Each category was graded from acceptable to very good.

In general, students seemed to enjoy the challenge while completing the learning objectives as in Gib-

son, Irving, and Scott (2019) and Chanin et al. (2018), since many of them wrote about how they were

entertained by creating their media in their logbooks and ﬁnal questionnaires. Nevertheless, some of

the participants did not speak in their video because they moved their mouths to adapt it to an existing

dialogue in TikTok so their pronunciation could not be assessed.

Student’s logbook: Logbook Challenge 1: The task was also aimed at reﬂecting on their learning, assess-

ing the challenge, the programme and their performance as critical and innovative thinkers ((Lin & Chen,

2018; Seifeddin, 2021). It was a diary or journal of sorts where students could share their difﬁculties, their

experience using the tools and tips provided, as well as knowledge acquired as autonomous learners

(Soler-Pardo & Alcantud-Díaz, 2020). The results showed that the students were not used to this kind of

reﬂection as some of them mainly commented on their likes and the aspects they enjoyed concerning

the programme without expanding on their experience. Nevertheless, in general, we are quite pleased

with the results because participants made an effort to write in their logbooks and many of them tried to

point out and express as many aspects as they could covering targets such as pronunciation, vocabulary,

as well as highlighting the difﬁculty of the song. All the participants wrote about how they enjoyed the

challenge, which was quite impressive because some of them considered themselves as shy, meaning

that it was difﬁcult for them to speak and show themselves in public.

All the participants seemed to have enjoyed the challenge shown in their engagement (Chanin et al.,

2018; Gaskins et al., 2015) even if they did not like singing. Although the overall results were positive,

some students wrote that they encountered difﬁculties when trying to sing and pronounce properly if the

song went fast. However, they had a range of slower songs to choose from. To help them to be conscious

of their progress, the students were asked to listen to their own recordings. Many of them wrote about

noticing a marked metacognitive improvement in their pronunciation since they had self-assessed and

compared both recordings. Comparing both audios to the model constitutes a way to be conscious of

one’s pronunciation. In addition, some more advanced students speciﬁed a more detailed improvement.

We can not compare our results to other studies since challenge-based learning has barely been used

in the teaching of EFL (only Cerveró-Carrascosa & García-Hernández, 2021) and thus, we are trying to ﬁll

this gap with the present article.

Regarding the use of the App LyricsTraining, only 2 out of 36 participants wrote about using it. Neverthe-

less, some of them were conscious about the acquisition of new vocabulary after looking up the lyrics

and they even wrote a list of the vocabulary learnt. Some students focused more on the choice of the

song and their tastes. Regarding practising, which was one of the most concerning issues for the teach-

er, many students admitted that they did practice during the whole challenge period. Students were

explained that taking part in the programme would not consist of just recording themselves, but also

dedicating a small amount of daily time to practice and to see if there was an improvement. The students

were granted autonomy and free reign, and we trusted them with responsibility (Apple, 2011). However,

the challenge was not merely to listen to the song but to also sing it along. That was perhaps the part

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that some students did not take into account because when performing Challenge 1 they sometimes

got a bit lost or could not follow the melody. It is noticeable when comparing both audios because in

some cases there was no difference. Overall, the majority of the participants enjoyed the challenge as in

Seifeddin (2021).

Logbook Challenge 2: Even though some of them worked in pairs, the logbook had to be done individ-

ually. In general terms, students alluded more to the challenge of media edition and the performance

than that of the experience of watching a ﬁlm or TV series in English. That made us think that it was highly

probable that some of them did not watch the ﬁlm or series and created the TikTok or dub directly. As

mentioned above in the logbook of challenge 1, in this project we placed our trust in our students and

they had to be responsible for their own learning. Technical aspects regarding the design of the ﬁnal vid-

eo were mentioned, such as the difﬁculty of ﬁxing the audio and the video when dubbing. Many of the

participants followed the tips suggested in the adapted CELSIP to choose a ﬁlm that they already knew

since it would be easier to follow if they already knew the plot. In this sense, oral reception was easier,

thus, there is a positive signiﬁcant correlation between the application of challenge-based learning and

students‘ assessment of oral capability as Yufrizal (2020) mentioned. Additionally, they would feel more

motivated (Chanin et al., 2018) since they were able to follow it. In general, participants were all excited

since they were able to choose their favourite ﬁlm or TV series. Others were excited about working in

pairs. Nonetheless, since this was performed during the last weeks of the second term, they had many

end-of-term exams and 4 of them were not able to deliver their tasks. Using subtitles or writing down the

dialogue of the chosen scene helped the students to realise the pronunciation of English words in a real

context (Baltova, 1999). It also helped them to acquire more vocabulary. Another important aspect is that

some students wrote about the plot of the ﬁlm they watched, and they also commented on transversal

content (Tecnológico de Monterrey, 2016) such as health (bulimia), class ﬁght and justice as the main

themes of their ﬁlms.

Regarding the negative comments, some of the students commented that they felt overwhelmed due to

the amount of time required to produce the media properly. Others mentioned that they did not enjoy

recording themselves, but they also had the dubbing a scene option since the aspect of students feeling

self-conscious was taken into account when challenges were presented. Some students felt frustrated

when editing the video, but they all managed to ﬁnish the ﬁnal task properly, so it helped to develop dig-

ital competence as well as learn to learn (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Professional, 2015). After

analysing both logbooks, we can state that being exposed to English through multimodal tools helped

students (Atkinson, 2015) with their understanding, and acquiring new vocabulary while feeling increas-

ingly motivated. The key to success was in their hands because they were the ones who could manage

their pace to practice the language.

Self-assessment: Students assessed their progress by grading themselves using the list of can do.

Before the implementation, the students had to carefully read the list of CEFR descriptors and under-

line or circle them from 1 to 5, with each descriptor ranging from 1 very poor and 5 very good. They

were asked to try to improve those descriptors that were not achieved using the adapted CELSIP. At

the end of the implementation (post-challenge) they had to ﬁll in the document again and compare

their progress, whilst being also conscious of their strengths and weaknesses. Since the partici-

pants only took part in two challenges and worked only on two sections of the adapted CELSIP, the

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progress was not noticeable in such a short period. Moreover, the fact that some students did not

follow a steady pace when using the programme made it more difﬁcult to observe any signiﬁcant

results (Soler-Pardo & Alcantud-Díaz, 2020). For this reason, students had similar results before and

after the implementation in almost every descriptor as more time is needed to attain better results.

However, it shows that the programme could have a huge potential if used regularly (Alcantud-Díaz

& Soler-Pardo, 2022; Soler-Pardo & Alcantud-Díaz, 2020).

To conclude, as the results of the implementation, we can state the following points: (i) the initial ques-

tionnaire proved that students lack a real English context which makes it difﬁcult to improve oral recep-

tion and production. Moreover, it was crucial to adapt the original idea of the implementation to the stu-

dents’ interests; (ii) the ﬁnal questionnaire made it clear that the CELSIP could help students to become

autonomous learners, provide an English environment to be exposed to, motivate them through the

Challenge-Based Learning approach while improving their listening and speaking skills; (iii) challenges

had good results in terms of pronunciation, vocabulary acquisition and motivation. Furthermore, chal-

lenges can be adapted or re-adapted to any curricular content or students’ need, as well as, to cross-cur-

ricular skills (Tecnológico de Monterrey, 2016); (iv) ChBL puts much of the responsibility in the hands

of students (Apple, 2011) and the student’s logbook was essential to make them become autonomous

learners, promote critical thinking (Brockbank & McGill, 1998) and improve their learn to learn compe-

tence; ﬁnally, (v) the self-assessment helped students in their process of learning, by providing a guide

of what they must manage and work on (CEFR, 2018). We have summarised the positive and negative

results in table 1 and table 2:

Table 1. Positive results

Categories Codes Indicators

Attitude Enjoyment Students’ comments, laughter when reviewing and watching the videos and outtakes.

Proactivity Initiative and anticipation of the next challenge, showing interest in it

Motivation Students’ curiosity, initiative and participation.

Engagement Most followed the process until its end with enthusiasm

Autonomy Responsibility in their own process. Decision making

Cognitive Thinking skills Reﬂecting in their learning, assessing the challenge, the programme and their performance

Creativity Free content creation regarding challenge 2

Metacognitive

Being conscious

about own lan-

guage learning

Self-assessment / reﬂection

Being conscious

about own pro-

nuntiation

Self-assessment / reﬂection

Language Skills Pronuntiation Clarity, speed

Vocabulary ad-

quisition Students’ own list of vocabulary learned through the challenges

Key competences Learn to learn Self-reﬂection, effective time and information management, ability to cope with uncertainty

and complexity

Digital Digital content creation and problem solving

Source: own elaboration.

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Table 2. Negative results

Categories Codes Indicators

Attitude Frustration Impulsiveness for wanting immediate solutions

Unsteady pace Students’ comment.

In challenge 1 some students did not go to the beat of music.

Personal preferences Students had to choice from a list of options which was limited.

Others / external causes Time limitation Internship period

Workload Exam period

Source: own elaboration.

An initial question was thrown at the beginning of this study: Can the CELSIP be implemented in Sec-

ondary Education to improve students’ motivation and oral skills?, along with three main objectives.

Given the results obtained, the ﬁrst objective, which was to design an adapted version of CELSIP for

Secondary Education based on the students’ age, level and interests, is ﬁlled since the adapted CEL-

SIP responds to Secondary students’ interests and it is conveniently justiﬁed. Moreover, the self-as-

sessment responds to the level to be achieved at the end of Secondary Education so it could work as

a checklist for students to work on their weakest descriptor. The tools offered in the adapted CELSIP

are free, so it covers every students’ socioeconomic background and SDG4: quality education (UN,

2015). It also responds to different learning styles such as visual, aural, verbal, physical and logical,

and it has no expiry date as it is a long-lasting tool (Soler-Pardo & Alcantud-Díaz, 2020). Regarding

the weaknesses of the programme or its use, its effectiveness depends on the students’ regular use

and perseverance. In this particular case, we noticed an irregular pace by students. It also showed

students’ absence of autonomous management and reﬂection when overwhelmed by exams. But,

in general terms and when used regularly and reﬂecting on it, it can be an effective learning tool.

Regarding the second objective, which was to implement the adapted CELSIP during the teacher

training period to improve students’ oral reception and production while working autonomously, it

was not achieved since implementation was short and no noticeable changes were perceived. How-

ever, some students noticed an improvement in their understanding when being exposed to the

target language (Atkinson, 2015) and when following the tools and tips provided in the programme.

The students improved their pronunciation and reading speed by repeating and imitating a model,

but it does not demonstrate their ability to pronounce better in another context. Moreover, since

oral production was not practised spontaneously, it does not prove consistent improvements in

that respect. However, during the sessions in which we spoke about the challenges, students were

more participative and even if they made mistakes they tried to speak. Improving oral production

and oral reception needs more constant work, and more exposure to the target language and, due

to the time constraints, we could only implement two challenges out of ﬁve of the initial idea. The

positive feedback from students made us think that working with this type of activity during a more

prolonged period would certainly lead us to conﬁrm and surpass the aims set in this research.

The third objective was to increase students’ motivation through a Challenge-Based Learning ap-

proach to become more engaged in their learning process. It was fully achieved since students

5. Conclusions

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stated in the last questionnaire that they were motivated to work with the challenges. It could also

be observed in their challenges since they were brilliant, and their enthusiasm was felt in class. Af-

ter analysing the students’ logbook and the ﬁnal questionnaire, we could estate that working with

Challenge-Based Learning was engaging. Students could apply English to their real-world interests

(Apple, 2010) using their favourite songs, ﬁlms and TV series. The workload may very well be a threat

to motivation so maybe CELSIP could have better results when implemented in periods when there

are fewer exams and pressure for students. Regarding students’ suggestions to choose their own

songs, it was tackled since each section allows students to add their suggestions to the list so the

programme could be personalized and, thus, be more motivating.

Among the general limitations and weaknesses of this study, we would say that time constraints

made it difﬁcult to obtain meaningful improvement in students’ oral reception and production since

developing oral skills needs more time. Students’ workload was another difﬁculty encountered since

they could not spend enough time working on the programme. Even though some difﬁculties were

encountered, the vast majority managed to hand in both challenges, their logbooks and self-assess-

ment with satisfactory results and enjoyed doing so.

In sum, despite the short implementation of the programme, the adapted CELSIP for Secondary

Education has proved to be an effective tool for online learning and also as a complement to face-

to-face learning. It enhances autonomous and reﬂective learning and develops the learn to learn

and the digital key competencies. As opposed to traditional methods, the freedom and variety of re-

sources that the adapted CELSIP provides, along with the ChBL approach, allow students to explore

different ways to learn while enjoying. In addition, the intervention presented in this study brings

novelty by personalizing learning, fostering student self-reﬂection and responsibility, ensuring ac-

cessibility and proposing innovative approaches such as ChBL, which contributes signiﬁcantly to the

educational landscape.

For further research, more experiences on the application of Challenge-based Learning in EFL are

necessary, since this methodology has proved to link real situations to learning within the framework

of long-life learning. Also, some problems need to be solved such as the fact of coping with different

levels of competency in the target language.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Conselleria d’Innovació, Universitats, Ciència i Societat Digital under

Grant (CIGE/2021/131) I+D+I ‘Interactive content H5P and SDG in Foreign Languages and Social

Sciences teaching and in pre-service teacher training’.

Authors contribution

Author 1 has been in charge of the implementation of the project in the High School and the gath-

ering of results. Author 2 has helped with the literature review, supervised the intervention at the

school and both have written the article.