Mr. Kalpesh V. Patel
Abstract :
In 21st century, learning has become more student- centered than teacher -centered. Students now want to learn with fun. Instead of chalk and talk method they want to learn through activity. It is al observed that students learn better when they are actually involved in doing something and interact and discuss this with their peers Group teaching method is onesuch method. Group Teaching Method emphasizes on Activity Oriented Teaching-Learning Process in the classroom .Teaching in-group emphasizes on learning more than teaching. Students interact with each other and learn in their peer groups. Group work is one way of ensuring active participation of students.One aim of higher education is to promote self-learning and making the students independent learners. Group learning helps in acquiring the skill to be independent learner. Group work can be effectively used in learning all the subjects but here in this article, the authors have restricted themselves to the use of group work in learning language.
Innovative Practices in Higher Education: Use of Group Work in Developing Language Skills
In 21st century, learning has become more student- centered than teacher -centered. Students now want to learn with fun. Instead of chalk and talk method they want to learn through activity. It is al observed that students learn better when they are actually involved in doing something and interact and discuss this with their peers Group teaching method is onesuch method. Group Teaching Method emphasizes on Activity Oriented Teaching-Learning Process in the classroom .Teaching in-group emphasizes on learning more than teaching. Students interact with each other and learn in their peer groups. Group work is one way of ensuring active participation of students. One aim of higher education is to promote self-learning and making the students independent learners. Group learning helps in acquiring the skill to be independent learner. Group work can be effectively used in learning all the subjects but here in this article, the authors have restricted themselves to the use of group work in learning language.
For some years now, methodologists have recommended small group work (including pair work) in the language classroom. In doing so, they have used arguments which, for the most part, are pedagogical. While those arguments are compelling enough, group work has recently taken on increased psycholinguistic significance due to new research findings on two related topics: the role of comprehensible input and the negotiation work possible in conversation between non-native speakers, or inter language talk. Thus, in addition to strong pedagogical arguments, there now exists a psycholinguistic rationale for group work in second language learning.
One popular way of suiting teaching to individual differences has been to divide the learners into groups. The logic behind this practice is that students usually must be taught in groups, since society cannot furnish a separate teacher for each learner. So the most convenient way to suit teaching to the individual characteristics of students is to divide the learners into homogeneous groups with each group composed of learners who are alike. Moreover, Calfee, and Pointkowski (1986), point out that research on grouping for instruction is motivation .is motivated by the assumption that grouping practices influence students’ academic and social learning.
Factors Affecting Group Work: The following factors work together, to result in-group work where every one involved is interested, active and thoughtful:
Ø The learning goals of group work
Ø The task
Ø The way information is distributed
Ø The seating arrangement of the member of the group
Ø The social relationship between the members of the group
The Goals of Group Work: Group work can promote language learning in the following ways:
A.Negotiation of input: The learners get exposure to language that they can understand (comprehensible input) and which contains unknown items for them. Group work properly handled is one of the most valuable sources of input.
B.New Language Items: Group work provides more opportunities for use of the new items compared to the opportunities in teacher led classes. Group work may improve the quality of these opportunities in terms of individualization, motivation, depth of processing and affective climate.
C.Fluency: The students attain fluency in the use of language item already learnt.
D.Communication Strategies: Students learn the following communication strategies:
Ø Negotiation strategies to control input; seeking clarification, seeking confirmation, checking comprehension, repetition.
Ø Strategies to keep a conversation going
Ø Strategies to make up for a lack of language items or a lack of fluency in the use of such items
Ø Strategies for managing long turns in speaking
E.Content: Through group work the students can master the content of their English curriculum. The teacher can also help the learners to achieve one or more of the language learning goals mentioned above.
Arranging the Groups: Groups of four to seven students are efficient for the communicative use of language.
Restructuring: In this case the groups are fluid and are changed according to various criteria.
One Centered: In this type of grouping, a single student is the Centre of focus and either tells a story or performs some other communicative language function.
Unified Group: In this case, every one is part of one large class group.
Dyads (Pairs): In dyads two students participate in activities together.
Types of Group Work Activities: Group work activities are of the following types:
1) The Cooperative Arrangement: In this type of group work activities, learners have equal access to the same material or information and cooperate to do the task.
2) The Superior Arrangement: In the superior inferior arrangement one member of the group has information that all the others need.
3) The Combining Arrangement: In this type of group work activities, each learner has a different piece of information that all the others need.
4) The Individual Arrangement: In the individual arrangement each learner has access to the same information but must perform or deal with different parts of it.
Different Types of Activities: The following types of activities can be used for the group work; these consist of extension activities dealing with language and of material already used with the class as a whole.
· Dialogues: The students work in pairs, reading aloud the dialogues, which have already been prepared by the teacher e.g. dealing with new lexis, problems of pronunciation, stress and intonation.
· Situation: The students can be made to practice e.g. inviting and responding and maps for giving directions.
· Grammar Exercises: A lot of textbooks contain exercises to be done either in class or as homework. The students can do the exercise orally in small groups, helping each other and discussing the answers.
· Interviewing Activities: These activities are based on the use of a specific structure such as simple present for likes/dislikes, comparatives and superlatives, used to etc. they often involve the use of a chart or questionnaire that has to be filled in.
· 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 but each piece of material contains one or two details, which are specific to that 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 each group and a new set of questions is issued which can only be answered with the help of information provided in the original groups.
· Preparatory Activities: Under this following two types of activities can be used;
a. 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 of groups. Scoring can sometimes add a bit of fun to this- one point for every correct question and bonus points for correct questions that the other pairs/groups answer incorrectly.
b. Role Preparations: The class is divided into groups and each group represents one character in a role-play. In the groups, the students woks out what sorts of personality they are, what sorts of things they intend to say and the questions they think they may be asked. At the end the class is organized for the actual role-paly.
Teacher’s Role: In the conventional classroom, the teacher takes on the role of the great leader, importer of knowledge and as the centre of all the activities. But this role is not suitable for English as foreign language (EFL) teachers who are teaching skills. This skill-based orientation implies a different role for the teacher. Active participation by the learner is essential. This can be done by employing group work activities in the classroom, but rather less the centre of activity. Certainly, a teacher who is monitoring, controlling, encouraging and participating in the different classroom groups will be even more active than the traditional teacher. The teacher’s role must be modified to become more managerial and supervisory. Teachers need to be more flexible in their attitudes towards how learning is achieved.
Advantages of Group Work: Group work has the following advantages:
a) Cooperative learning used in group, is a valuable strategy for teaching students, especially useful with students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds who are learning English as second language.
b) It offers a method for managing diversity channeling peer influence into a positive force for improving school performance, and involving students in classroom communication and activity.
c) Students with limited English language skills have less time to acquire the English essential to academic success, and need a low risk environment to practice English. Group learning provides an appropriate method for these purposes, and in addition offers increased opportunities for students’ social development.
d) Group learning strategies can be used in a variety of ways and time periods. Team building and oral language activities can be used to familiarize students with the approach and build language skills. Such collaborative activities include games for exchanging personal information, problem solving exercises, brainstorming, group discussion, cooperative review of information, and story sequencing.
e) Group activities developed in western countries have been advocated for use in foreign and second language learning internationally and the South Asian second language educators feel that group activities are appropriate to their contexts.
f) The potential benefits of the use of group work are more learner language production, more varied talk, the adoption by students of a wider range of roles, more individualization, less boredom among students, more opportunity for communicative language use, more creative, risk taking language use, grater variety in learner talk, increased learner independence, and more opportunity to develop social interaction skills and learning to learn skills.
g) If careful attention is paid to the structure of tasks students work on together, the negotiation work possible in group activity makes it an attractive alternative to the teacher led, ‘lockstep’ mode and a viable classroom substitute for individual conversations with native speakers.
h) Group work is a means of organizing more advanced students to tutor their lower proficiency classmates: The teacher acts as a facilitator, only intervening when a group is unable to solve a problem on its own.
i) Group work can be used to cater for mixed abilities by building listening and decision, making skills, encouraging students to state opinions and disagree politely, beginning with pairs and short, structured tasks before students works in larger groups on longer, less defined projects, giving students a voice in choosing their group projects and providing students with responsibilities through the use of well defined group roles.
j) In fact the real art in grouping is keeping all students actively engaged and on task.
k) Group work activities should be frequently used in large classes because the use of groups minimizes the time and expense that would otherwise be needed to produce materials for large classes.
Precautions to be taken by the teacher in Group Work: While using group work, the teacher has to be very careful due to these reasons:
a) Sometimes all the potential trouble makers gather together in one group which becomes a gang. Such problem should be avoided by the intervention of the teacher.
b) The students from themselves into natural-ability groups. The teacher should note that no group is seen to be inferior.
c) In group activities, isolates should not be left out. Teachers should try to integrate them into groups at the out set.
d) The key problems cited in using groups in second language teaching are; low motivation, significant variation in proficiency levels and large classes.
Inspite of some of the limitations, there are at least five pedagogical arguments for the use of group work in language learning. Group work increases the quantity of language practice, provides opportunities to use language , improves the quality of student talk, helps in individualized instruction, creates a positive affective climate in the classroom, and increases student motivation.
References
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2. Brahambhatt, J.C. (1983). A Study of Prepartion of Language Programme in English for Pupils of Class VII and its Effects on Achievements in Relation to some Psycho-soico Factors. In M.B.Buch, (ed) Fourth Survey of Research in Education, New Delhi NCERT.
3. Brumfit and Johnson (1979) The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching, Oxford University Press.
4. Burhoc J.C. (1989).Paired Classes Evaluation Based on Survey Results. Paper Presented at the Annual Conference of the California Teachers of English to Speakers of other Languages, ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. Ed 312880.
5. Chang ,K.Y. & Smith W.F. (1991). Cooperative Learning and CAL/IVD in Begining Spnish: An Experiment. Modern Language Journal, 75.
Asst. Prof. Amity B.Ed. College, Bharuch