Project-based learning is a student-centered methodological approach that involves communication, cooperation, and autonomy. Even though project-based learning has been largely explored in foreign language teaching, little is known about its implementation in second-language beginner levels. This action research study describes the use of project-based learning by a pre-service teacher in a group of EFL eighth-graders at a secondary state school in Cordoba, Colombia. Data sources include video classroom observations, students’ focus interviews and students’ diaries. Findings reveal the affordances that project-based learning have in the development of the students’ communicative competence, highlighting the strategies that they use to communicate and the way they construct confidence when planning and reporting their projects.