What are the Effects of Project-based English Curriculum on the Development of Learners' Competencies? A Case Study of a Japanese University English Language Program

Japanese English education reform continues to falter, and the same is true of university English education. However, amidst these circumstances, transmission-oriented English education is gaining attention as a methodological approach to English language educational reform. Transmission-oriented English education, in which the authors are also engaged, is a model for reform that shifts the emphasis from the traditional reception-based approach in English education to a more communicative, active learning approach. However, while these educational practices have shown results in terms of excitement in the classroom and subjective satisfaction among learners, there is a lack of objective proof, and the accumulation of research to verify the results objectively is an urgent need. In this paper, we examine the results of the GTEC (Global Test of English Communication)-Academic and TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), which objectively measure English proficiency, and the GPS (Global Proficiency Skills)-Academic, which objectively measures basic social competencies, in two different groups of participants to determine whether the presence or absence of transmission-oriented English education has contributed to the growth of abilities ranging from subsets of English skills to socially necessary competencies by utilizing statistical verification. One interesting result was that the experimental group that took transmission-oriented English education for one year scored significantly higher in English writing than the group that did not, and since there were no statistically significant differences in any of the other components of English proficiency, we concluded that this could be considered an outcome of transmission-oriented English education.