QUICK RESOURCE SHEET #65

Group work

PREVIOUS TOPICS LISTED AT BOTTOM OF PAGE

Walk past any EFL/ESL classroom and chances are good you’ll see students working in small groups. Why do we conduct lessons in this fashion? Is it a good idea? What more do we need to know to use small-group instruction effectively?

Group work came into the standard EFL teaching repertoire with communicative methodologies in the 1970s. At that time, studies of contemporary foreign language classes revealed that as much as 80% of lesson time consisted of the teacher talking to (at) the students. In a class of, say, 30 students, it is evident that the learner hardly got a chance to practice the language. Teacher Talking Time (TTT) became taboo and ways were devised to stamp it out and train the students to actually perform in the language they were learning.

from http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/methodology/whole_class.shtml

…not only does "pair and group work immediately increase the amount of student talking time" (Harmer 1998), it provides the students with the opportunity to communicate with each other to share "suggestions, hypothesis, insights, feedback, successes, and failures" (Nielson, 1989).

from http://esl.about.com/cs/teachingtechnique/a/bl_baker4.htm

Here are more resources for learning about teaching in small groups.

http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/september_04_lm.php

“This research was carried out by using a small scale study of small group work activities conducted in a teacher training context. Two in-class SWG activities and one homework SGW activity with eighteen students related to two MA courses at the University of Birmingham were audiotape recorded, transcribed and analyzed to determine if NS students dominated the activities. Then the project participants met for group discussions to investigate the elements that inhibit or promote participation in SGW tasks. The participants were also asked to make recommendations on how these types of activities could be structured to better meet the students' learning needs.”

http://www.salzburgseminar.org/ASC/csacl/progs/interactive/GHANIA.htm

“One sensible thing we do in a situation like this is prepare students for this new way of learning. While we explain to them our aims and objectives, we get them to gradually change their attitude to classroom organization and allow them to interact independently. We cannot expect our students to know about group work process, such as: turn taking, interrupting, active listening, arguing, agreeing, disagreeing. . .Depending on the type of activity, we need to provide them with some of the functions of the language to be used in different situations. By and by, students learn that group work leaves a great scope for peer teaching, that in the course of group discussions students learn from each other, correct each other and even teach each other linguistic or non-linguistic material through the content of the discussion.”

http://www.onestopenglish.com/Teacher_Support/Methodology/Archive/classroom-management/pairwork.htm

“Simple mathematics will tell use that in a one-hour lesson with 20 learners, each learner will speak for just 90 seconds if the teacher speaks for half the lesson. In order to encourage learners in a monolingual class to participate in pair and group work, it might be worth asking them whether they regard speaking for just 3% of the lesson to be good value and point out that they can increase that percentage substantially if they try to use English in group activities. At first learners may find it strange to use English when communicating with their peers but this is, first and foremost, a question of habit and it is a gradual process.”

http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/fluencyjapanese.html

“The next stage puts learners into groups of 3-5 and a group leader is chosen. Some teachers prefer to put stronger students with each other while others prefer to mix the stronger with the weaker ones.  For the author’s group discussions, students were randomly assigned to groups five students per group. An odd number is preferable so that the group cannot become deadlocked when trying to reach a decision via a consensus.  Students are randomly assigned to a new group at the start of a new discussion and a new group leader is chosen. The purpose behind random group selection is for learners to become more comfortable expressing their opinions in front strangers and also to have the opportunity to become the group leader. The group leader is responsible for keeping the discussion moving and bringing in new people to keep the topic from stagnating.”

Previous editions of the QUICK RESOURCE SHEET

#1 – Creating quizzes (and more) online                                                         

#2 – Vocabulary builders

#3 – Online discussion groups for English teachers                                    

#4 – Grammar headaches – and how to cure them

#5 – Resources for new teachers                                                     

#6 – International Education Week

#7 – Mentoring programs                                                                    

#8 – Education publications online

#9 – Applied Linguistics                                                                   

#10 – English for Young Learners

#11 – World AIDS Day                                                                      

#12 – Online writing guides

#13 – E-mail exchanges                                                                      

#14 – Free online English courses

#15 – Effective e-mail communication                                             

#16 – Libraries online

#17 – American Studies                                                                     

#18 – Teaching methodologies

#19 – Internet tutorials                                                                       

#20 – Using the newspaper – Part I

#21 – Making books                                                                           

#22 - Using the newspaper – Part II

#23 – Human rights in language teaching

#24 – Blogging

#25 – Poetry and language teaching

#26 – The communicative approach

#27 -  Idioms

#28 – Earth Day

#29 – Alternative assessment

#30 – Peer assessment

#31 – Self-assessment

#32 – Portfolio assessment – Part I

#33 -  Portfolio assessment - Part II (Online Portfolios)

#34 – Intercultural communication

#35 – Teaching Adults

#36 – Learning disorders / Special needs

#37 – Using computers in reading instruction

#38 – Use of authentic materials

#39 – English for Medical Purposes

#40 – Sources for authentic materials

#41 – Education and technology

#42 – Academic writing

#43 – Teaching and stress

#44 – Back to school

#45 – Motivating students

#46 – Action research

#47 – Internet terminology

#48 – Fluency

#49 – Curriculum design

#50 – Pragmatics

#51 - Podcasting for English teachers

#52 – Critical reading

#53 – Learner autonomy

#54 – Scaffolding

#55 – Holidays

#56 – English for Academic Purposes

#57 – Mixed-level classes

#58 – The brain and language learning

#59 – Book clubs/Readers’ groups

#60 – Teachers and technology

#61 – Using video in the language classroom

#62 – Internet-based classroom projects

#63 – Observing student teachers

#64 – Digital literacy