Key
words: Group work, collaborative learning, Techniques, participation, students,
language classroom.
Introduction
As
we are all aware, active participation in learning plays a crucial role in
education. Learning Pyramid, which was
developed by the National Training Laboratories reveals that students learn and
absorb better more from methods in which
they are actively involved(teaching others, practicing doing, discussing) than
when they are passive learners (listening to a lecture, reading, using
audiovisual).Hence, there are many reasons for students to work in small group
in any class, but “nowhere is collaborative learning and group work more
important than in the language classroom” (Rhoades,
2013, p. 29) .The teachers often
argue that their class is too large for group work. They find it challenging as
they believe that they will be unable to control the class. There are a number
of problems which occur, when collaborative work is planned in a large
classroom without taking into consideration a few techniques which will be
discussed in my paper.
First, let’s look at the teachers’ comments
when they try to organize group work in a large classroom and as a result they
only get chaos. ”I could not hear what all the teams were discussing”; “ I
could not control what language they
were using”; “ I could not tell if one student had been doing all the talking
or if everyone had the opportunity to participate.” The paper outlines a few
techniques/practical ways to introduce group work into large classrooms and
support cooperative learning. The experience tells us that “we learn language
by using it”.
How to form groups? Forming the groups is
not such an easy task for a teacher. There are
a number of factors which should be taken into account. Research
(summarized by Bennett, 1995),suggests “the ideal size for groups engaging in
collaborative work is four - pairs are too small to generate lots of ideas,
threes tend to form a pair and exclude the third member, and groups bigger than
four become harder for the children to manage, and so it is less likely that
everyone will be fully included.” Thus, with groups larger than four, it
becomes harder for all students to hear and participate. Desk arrangement is
one more point which is important when we are talking about forming the groups.
As J.E.Ormond, J.E. (2006) states, “desk arrangement should actually be fluid.”
Thus, it is important to arrange the desks in such a way to allow teacher move
easily between groups and around classroom to monitor groups. This desk
arrangement is better to be done before the class begins, to avoid taking up
class time. It is said that it is more beneficial to create “mixed
heterogeneous groups”.To do this we, teachers , should place
students with the same interests, gender, goals, etc into different groups. One
way to find out this information is to collect it from students on the first
day of class. How can it be done? We can ask them to complete the information
given on the cards. For instance: Name; Gender; Interests, etc. The information
collected on the cards is vital to form heterogeneous groups and it also helps
us to make connections among students. Keeping track of groups is also so
important factor. This means to give learners chance to work with different
peers and not always with the same
students. After introducing the cards, we can mark them, so I know who
was in the previous group. This information helps us to quickly arrange
students into new groups. For example, I put an “A” at the top of four cards
for the first group and so on. In case of smaller class, students may need to
work together more than once, but we should make sure they have not worked with
at least two students in the group.
Besides, these above mentioned ways how to
form a group in a better way, now let’s move to the one technique which
encourages learners to work collaboratively. Using colors to organize students,
can support everyone’s participation into group work. This cooperative
technique is known as Rainbow learning. What does it imply? It is more helpful
to ensure that all students are participating and contributing to the class
than assigning one student to be the spokesperson for a group. How does this
technique work? We assign a color to each person in the group. It is better to
use colors instead of numbers, because psychologically, having a number “1” may
be understood as a superior. It is better to avoid having more than four
members in a group, but sometimes it happens, so in that case one color can be
shared by two students. The use of color works well with students who need some
encouragement to speak and it also makes students who like to dominate the
group to realize that they should let other colors to take their turns as well.
Hence, all have the chance to contribute when their color is called. This way
of organization helps us to make all students engaged in group activity. Of
course , it might be boring to use colors all the time, we can use names of
seasons, or just let them to decide what titles they want.
One of the most important element in
effective group work is “to set clear expectations of how students should act
while they are in groups “. We should discuss expectations
with students and decide together consequences, if an expectation is not
followed. For example: what should we do if someone is not participating or
what is the consequence if a group becomes too load? When they set consequences
by themselves, they have higher sense of responsibility and do their best to
follow the expectations.
To encourage learners’ responsibility and
leadership we can assign them roles. These can be some roles assigned to
students. Topic monitor- This student has the role to keep the group to focus
only on the topic and not start discussing other things. Volume monitor- this member is responsible for keeping the
volume of the group low. Participation monitor-this student has to make sure
that everyone is participating. You can add some other roles as well, such a
timer, writer, etc. We can switch the roles to students each time we do group
work.
The research was conducted at IBSU, where
participated both students and educators. They were asked several questions
concerning this issue. Their responses demonstrate that 37% of survey participant have had some
experience of working with a group in a large classroom, which might be a
result of most(50%) educators view that they are not doing their job, if they
are not lecturing and that’s why they allocate more time to teaching rather
than students’ practice through cooperative classroom management. Half of the
responders think that it is impossible to organize collaborative group work in
a large classroom while other half disagrees with this statement. As 63% of
participants think, it is more challenging to control the language students
use and the level of their
participation, which only leads to chaos. Hence, it requires more organization
to decrease the difficulties which might occur like noise level, concentration
and level of contribution.
Conclusion
The purpose of the paper was to show a few
techniques how to organize cooperative work and the importance of it for
language learners. The main objective of language class for students is to
practice English during class time. They will not have this opportunity if
their class is mostly teacher-centered. There is no verbal practice when
teacher is leading and students are only passive recipients. But if we organize
the group work with using cooperative techniques discussed in the paper, all
learners will have a chance to practice their language in their groups. No
matter age or objectives, teachers can use these techniques to minimize the
chaos in their classroom and to encourage them to be learners who can learn
from one another.
References
Rhoades, G. (2013). Minimizing the Chaos Through
Cooperative Classroom Management. English Teaching Forum, 51(4), 1-46.
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