GROUP AND PAIR WORK

FORNICOLA PATRIZIA, MATR. 1187

1. INTRODUCTION

Students learn best when they are actively involved in the process. Research has demonstrate that an important factor in student success is the opportunity for students to work in groups. Students working in collaborative groups appear more satisfied, tend to learn more of what is taught and retain it longer than when the same content is presented in other instructional formats.

In foreign language learning students have a much greater opportunity to speak English during their lesson if the teacher introduce group and pair work. At school, they can speak the foreign language for approximately two/three hours. It becomes apparent that techniques are necessary to increase the amount of student talking time. The only way this can be achieved is through a simultaneous cut in teacher talking time and an introduction of activities where as may as possible of the students will be speaking at the same time. Group and pair work would seem to be the answer to the problem.

There are three general types of group work: informal learning groups, formal learning groups and study teams.

Informal learning groups can be initiated, for example, by asking students to turn to a classmate and spend two minute discussing a question the teacher have posed. The teacher can also form groups of three or five to solve a problem or pose a question. The teacher can organize informal groups at any time in a class of any size to check on students’ understanding of the material or to give them an opportunity to apply what they are learning. If the teacher has never done group work in his classes, he experiments first with informal learning groups.

Formal learning groups are teams set up to complete a specific task, such as write a report, carry out a project or prepare a position paper. These groups may complete their work in a single class section or over several weeks.

Study teams are long-term groups usually existing over the course of a semester.

There are many good reasons for use of pair and group work. They provide opportunities for developing generic skills such as organization, negotiation, interaction, co-operation, leadership, following. These skills are not automatically picked up but are skills that must be explicitly taught. Group work is useful for encouraging social interaction, creating a relaxed atmosphere, practicing language, sharing knowledge, exchanging opinions, feeling learner freer to make mistakes. Pair and group work give students more opportunity for practicing language and for developing their ability to cooperate.

There are also many problems in using pair and group works such as lack of appropriate materials in course book which do not include material that can be used in this way; long time spending in organising the group and planning action; difficulty in monitoring and correcting mistakes; unsuitable classroom.

2. TYPES OF ACTIVITIES.

There are many different activities that can be done with students working in groups or in pairs.

¨ Further practice activities.

a) Dialogues. Students work in pairs making dialogues using substitution prompts or preparing their own dialogues based on the model.

b) Situations. Students work in pairs practising inviting and responding or giving directions.

c) Grammar exercises. Students do the exercises orally in small groups, helping each other and discussing the answers.

¨ Interviewing activities. Students can work in pairs or in small groups or they can move around freely asking questions of as many other members of the class as possible. These activities are usually based on the use of specific structures and often involve the use of a chart or questionnaire that has to be filled in. A written report of their findings is sometimes a useful follow-up, either in class or for homework.

¨ Jigsaw activities. The class is divided into groups and each group is given written or recorded material to study. The topic is the same for each group. Questions are provided to guide the students through their listening or reading. When each group has found the answers to its questions, the class as a whole is regrouped with one student from group one, one from group two, one from group three and so on and a new set of questions is issued. These questions can only be answered by pooling the information provided in the first group.

¨ Preparatory activities. Question preparation. Working in pairs or in groups, the students prepare questions based on a text or listening passage that they can then ask the other pairs or groups.

All the activities have to be planned carefully in advance and changed over a period of time. Their task, simple in early stages, becomes more difficult afterwords. It is important gradually move from compositive to cooperative activities and from teacher-learner interaction to learner-learner interaction. The teacher provides a feedback after each activity and evaluate the products of the group work. The evaluation focuses on the content as well as on the language.

3. PLANNING PROBLEMS.

¨ How the groups will be formed.

Some teacher prefer to set up the groups randomly to maximize their heterogeneity: a mix of males and females, verbal and quiet students, the stronger and the weaker. In small classes some teacher let students choose with whom they want to work (for example asking students to write down the names of three students with whom they would most like to work). Self-selected groups seem to work best in small classes. Other teachers prefer to form the groups themselves, taking into account students’ levels, work habits and gender. They place well-prepared students in groups with other well prepared students or try to sprinkle the more able students evenly among the groups.

¨ Group size. In general, groups of four or five members work best. Groups larger than six have several drawbacks: it is too easy for students to become passive observers rather than active participants; students may not get the opportunity to speak frequently since there are so many people. Students’ sense of community and resposibility may be less intense in larger groups.

¨ Roles. All group members have a role to play in completing the group task. Possible roles include: note taker, reporter, moderator, etc.

¨ Timing. It’s sometimes very difficult to predict how long certain activities will take. Often one or two groups or pairs will finish before the others so the teacher can give them an extension activity. For most activities it’s a good idea to fix a time limit and then stop, irrespective of whether all the students have finished, otherwise the whole thing gets out of hand and half the class is sitting around chatting and getting bored.

¨ Physical layout. Fortunately many schools are now equipped with light moveable tables and chairs, so that the furniture can be easily be rearranged to suit group work activities. If, however, the desks are fixed, pair work can be varied by pairing a student with the person on his left, on his right, in front or behind, as well as by asking students to change places for the duration of the activity.

4. GENERAL STRATEGIES.

· When the teacher organizes pair or group works he must give a task. The tasks should be appropriate both for the students’ abilities and interests and for the aims of the teaching programme. If students know the desired outcomes of each group activity, they can judge the effectiveness of their discussion and their product.

· It is important that learners understand clearly what to do and how to do before starting so simple direction must be given by the teacher. The learners need to know the purpose of the discussion, for example, whether it is to clarify the information presented, or to talk at the content from a different point of view. In addition to a well-defined task, every group needs a way of getting started, a way of knowing when its task is done, and how students will be graded.

· Students in a group must perceive that each member is responsible in terms of success or failure of the final outcome; they need to be aware of the group as an entity, of the necessity for members to work together and contribute to the group. Learners aren’t used to cooperate; they need practice in such skills as active and tolerant listening, giving and receiving constructive criticism and managing disagreements. The teacher has to change the pairs/groups from time to time. He doesn’t always have the same students working together just because they happen to sit together.

· No group leader or reporter is required because when there is a leader the other group members felt little responsibility for the result of their work. The function of group leaders (such as recording the group’s findings on a large piece of paper, reporting to the whole class and taking notes) can be shared among group members.

· Students must be free to work alone when they want. Providing a quiet area within the room for students who wish to work alone, or who are required to work alone for either discipline or control reasons, may be an appropriate strategy.

· The teacher has to resist the temptation to take part in the activity, both because the teacher tends to dominate the group and inhibit freer speech and because the role of teacher as guide and monitor is an important one. He moves around, listens to and notes recurrent errors for later correction. If learners know that the teacher is moving around the room eavesdropping on all the pairs or groups, they are more likely to work efficiently than if they see the teacher stuck in a corner and tied by the part he has assumed.

· The products of group work must be varied: presentations with clearly defined rules and criteria; poster presentations; individual follow up assessments.

5. ASSESSING GROUP WORK.

The assessment process is an interactive part of the learning process. What is important is that the assessment methods and criteria are made clear to students before they begin the activity.

There are many assessment methods suitable for assessing group work. They may be used individually or in combination in order to assess a range of skills and knowledge and to generate a group or individual mark.

· Individual report or assignment. Students work as a group but each student produce the report separately.

· Group report or assignment. This is probably the most fundamental way of assessing group work, where a mark is given to each member of the group based on a single piece of work submitted by the group. This method can be very effective in formative assessment, where the process of encouraging students to work in a group may be the main objective. Potential problems may arise when it is used for summative assessment because students often resent other group members for not doing their fair share of the work and so contributing negatively to their own mark.

· Observation and interview. Depending on the type of activity it may be possible to assess group work based on direct observation and interviewing. The teacher can observe how the students work together and divide activities and assess the students on this basis. The effective group interaction and cooperation become a criteria for grading. The difficulty with this approach is that not all types of group work can be assessed in this way and the process can be time consuming and subjective.

· Group presentations. The oral presentation is the most common method for assessing group work. The assessment can be based on the quality of the presentation, the quality of content, overall understanding and comprehension during questioning. The presentations may be given by a group representative or by all members of the group. They can be assessed by the teacher or can be peer assessed by the rest of the students. The disadvantage of this method is that students may get nervous and the process can be subjective and very time consuming.

· Poster presentations. It can be used as an alternative to reports and oral presentations. Each group would produce a single poster which may be assessed by the tutor or peer assessed by the other students. The criteria for assessment should be discussed with the students before they produce their posters.

· Peer assessment of contribution to the group. The teacher asks each group member to generate an anonymous peer mark for each individual member of their team. The mark may be based on their assessment of the overall group interaction and contribution to the work load. In this way each student gets a mark based on the quality of the group report or assignment but also a mark based on their individual efforts.

· Individual exercises. If the teacher is uncomfortable with awarding all students the same mark for a group activity and is not happy with peer assessment of individual contributions, then he may set each student a piece of work which supports or complements the group activity but which is completed individually. This, in some ways, goes against the ethos of group work but both students and teachers may be more comfortable if some proportion of the marks come from individual effort alone.