GROUP AND PAIR WORK
Introduction
Characteristic of English language teaching in the last
years has been the distinction between linguistic competence and communicative
competence.
Linguistic competence can
be defined as the knowledge of the rules of the language (grammatical,
phonological, syntactical); the communicative competence is the ability
to get the message through, to interact in a communicative setting involving
one or more other persons.
It’s different to know the general features of a language
than knowing how to use it in a conversational context (influenced by a
different setting, topic, social role of the speakers, their attitudes and
gestures).
Our students, studying a second language, could discover
outside the classroom how much the interaction is difficult and getting the
message across not easy.
That’s why it’s necessary to develop inside the class the
communicative competence through activities simulating the real world of the
second language life. What will be important in these activities is not the
knowledges of the verb forms or other grammatical structures (or the rightness
of the words) but, the first aim will be trying to get the meaning across.
Students will have a wider opportunity to speak English
inside the class if the teacher introduces and organizes group and pair works;
besides, groupwork is useful for encouraging social interaction.
1. It’s
main features
Generally, students working in collaborative groups appear
more satisfied with their classes.
There are many kinds of activities in which students can be
involved; these are practice activities such as dialogues or the
simulation of situational-functional context (giving, accepting and refusing
invitations or giving directions or dealing with time-tables); interviewing
activities with the use of a questionnaire that students have to fill in
(even moving around the class asking questions or working in groups); role-plays
dividing the class in groups and establishing roles; jigsaw activities
(dividing the class into groups: each of them has something to study; when each
group has finished the groups are re-organized with one student from every
group and they have to answer other questions using the knowledges acquired in
the previous group work).
There are three general types of group work:
·
Informal learning
·
Formal learning groups
·
Study teams
Informal learning groups are
made within a single class session and are organized at any time to check on
students’ understanding of the material or to discuss some question posed by
the teacher.
Formal learning groups
are established to accomplish a specific task and students may complete their
work in a single class session or over several weeks.
Study teams are long-term
groups with stable membership whose aim is to complete course assignments.
Of course, managing the groups is not easy and requires
some techniques even to let all the students talk.
Usually, it is better to fix a time limit because it’s difficult to predict how long the activity
will last or even to avoid that some groups or pairs will finish before the
others feeling bored (in this case the teacher should give them another task).
It’s important for the teacher to organize the monitoring time trying to share
it among all the groups.
The discipline during these activities is important to
maintain and that’s possible only when all the pairs or groups have equal
responsibility even to avoid every chance of chat in the mother tongue.
When a group is made the same members have to choose the
reporter between them because, usually, when it happened the teacher had chosen
him or her, the group work has finished quite unsuccessfully because of the
lack of responsibility of the most part of the members; instead, it’s a good
method that each member will assume the role of leader in turn or even share
the functions of the leader among the group members or, at least, all of them
have to contribute and have to feel responsible for the success of their work.
It’s even possible that the teacher directly assigns roles to the members of a group. Some possible roles include:
someone who control that the group’s work keeps on task; someone else act as
time keeper; someone take clear notes; there’s who manages the discussion and
who will report to the others.
The teacher, usually, directs selection of the learners to
form pairs/groups work quickly, randomly or he/she can group students according
their abilities. In choosing how to organize groups the teacher should consider
such variable as the intended outcome of the task and the nature and size of
the class. To avoid the same students work always together, it’s of primary
importance to change the members of the pairs or groups, even to realize a
complete socialization between the class-mates.
After each activity is important to provide the learner a feedback and the evaluation will focus both on the content and on
the language; it’s important that this process includes a thorough review of
group exercises.
During the work, it’s important to balance the sounds
to avoid complaints from the other teachers so the
teacher has to encourage students to lower their voices.
Another problem in realizing group and pair work is the classroom
organization not always suitable for groupwork
activities. So, it is possible to re-arrange the class before the lesson to
reduce noise or, if the desks are fixed, the mates can work with those on their
left or on their right, or behind or in front of them, or they can change place
during the activity, or even stand if they have to realize a role-play for a
better simulation of the real life.
For a successful result of group and pair work it’s
important the teacher had planned before
what he/she is going to do; it’s necessary to give clear
instructions and explanations to avoid some
students get silent because they don’t know what to do.
The interaction in the beginning is teacher-learner, then
moves to learner-learner, passing by a competitive to a cooperative activity.
2. The
central role of the teacher for the success of the groupwork
One of the main point concerning the realization of these
activities is what the role of the teacher should be.
The teacher is the first responsible as the
atmosphere of the class is serene and motivating for the students because this
is the starting point to keep the learners relaxing themselves without feeling
ignorant or inhibited; so the first aim of a pair-group work activity is to
create a relaxing atmosphere developing, first of all, students’
ability to cooperate.
We know the main teacher’s role inside a class is that
of facilitator of learning and
according group and pair work activities this include:
·
being a coordinator of
the activities and of the students’s learning toward the acquisition of the
communicative ability;
·
being a classroom manager,
responsible for grouping activities into lessons;
·
being a language instructor
presenting new language and controlling students’ performance;
·
being a consultant when
students or situations ask for an help.
There could be some constraints affecting interaction such
as: the lack of language, the time, social conditions, differences in
pronunciation, noises, weather conditions, people speaking; so the teacher has
to create conditions to get students used to background noises.
But there are also constraints for the realization of the
activities: personal problems, time class, time for preparing lessons, lack of
materials, lack of instruments, lack of students’motivation. It’s necessary to
overcome all this kind of obstacles.
Generally, above all in the beginning, working in small
groups is seeing as doing nothing in the class. It’s the role of the teacher
that’s important in this case in making them understand that the talk taking
place, during these activities, has a purpose (above all helping them to
understand better about a new information). It’s even important to let students
think with themselves and jot down some notes collecting ideas before starting
to work together in exchanging information.
Teacher has to take into consideration that there can be
some students wishing or needing to work alone (as individuals); so they can
leave the group and taking notes, thinking or reflecting in a private activity.
The groupwork will be successfull at all if:
1)
the teacher has introduced the
activity with enthusiasm stimulating students’ interest and curiosity;
2)
all the students have understood
the instructions about what to do;
3)
the teacher has pre-taught new
words and information students could meet to set out their work;
4)
the teacher has established a time
limit (to help students to do the activity with involvement);
5)
the teacher has to listen without
interrupting (he/she can take notes on the recurrent errors for a later
correction).
3. The
task
These activities could require learners to carry out
realistic and meaningful tasks with the purpose of involving students in
searching for information (the so-called “information gap”). This will
encourage them to use the language spontaneously in different meaningful
context; all that will help students to become accurate and meaningful both in
speaking and in writing.
The main feature of these activities is that a
communicative interaction is realized and it gives the learner a way to express
his personality and individuality in the classroom and to find a
social-emotional balance within it, in an equal position with the teachers
acting as co-communicator.
So, interaction through groupwork involve pedagogic
implications as it requests a deeper learner involvment, co-presence of
self-respect and awareness to take risks.
The Common European Framework identifies different kinds of
oral interaction activities:
·
Conversation
·
Informal discussion (with friends)
·
Formal discussion
·
Goal oriented cooperation
·
Obtaining good and services
·
Information exchange
·
Interviewing and being interviewed
It’s important, when the teacher decides to let students
act these activities, to set short simple tasks in the early stages and to get
students become familiar with pair work before group work.
It’s necessary to plan the activity in advance making sure
all the instruments needed are available.
4. The
assessment
The choice of assessment strategies will depend on the
learning outcomes set for the group exercise.
Generally, it’s more appropriate for each student, member
of the same team, to receive the same mark of the group.
Groups-work have showed that students, usually, achieve
higher scores than individuals and that they enjoy collaborative test taking.
It’s common too, that teacher and students negotiate the marks allocated to the
different elements of a task; this method helps students develop a sense of
responsibility towards the task and their work and helps all the parties (group
members and teacher) for a better understanding of the assessment.