THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENTHAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL ------INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE TECHNIQUES FOR ORGANIZING PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS AT HAM RON
Trang 1THANH HOA EDUCATION AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT
HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL
- -INITIATIVE EXPERIENCE
TECHNIQUES FOR ORGANIZING PAIR WORK AND
GROUP WORK ACTIVITIES FOR STUDENTS AT HAM RONG HIGH SCHOOL
Author: Bui Thi Hieu Position: Teacher Research field: English
THANH HOA 2022
Trang 31 INT RO DU CTI ON
1.1 RATI ONAL E
Tomeetthe
demand of learners, teaching English in Vietnam has been changing English istaught not only at all colleges and universities, but also almost every high schooland it is considered as a compulsory subject at secondary school By applyingvarious new approaches, methods, and techniques, teaching English has shift fromthe traditional grammar translation approach to the communicative approach.According to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the purpose of languageteaching and learning is to develop communicative competence in the targetlanguage
In learner-centered approach, the choice of teaching methods are often morecomplicated than the construction of many teaching objectives Some authorssuggest that this type of work can carry out in two periods In the first period,teachers need to find the student's experience and learning methods they prefer, andwith their existing experience, teachers can select appropriate teaching methods Inthe second stage, teachers need to engage the active participation of students inplanning their academic programs This work can be done by encouraging students
to think, to engage in learning activities organized by teachers in a positive,proactive and creative way Therefore, the organization of learning activities forstudents have a special role and it’s very important for teachers to pay attention insetting teaching program Two common forms of class organization are working inpairs (Pair work) and working in group (Group work)
TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGES
1 INTRODUCTION
2 CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2.3 Teachers’ implementation of pair work, group work in
current classes as teaching experience
11
2.4 The effectiveness of the teaching experience 11
3 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
Trang 4In the context of Ham Rong High School, English is taught as a compulsorysubject for the students of Grade 10,11,12 These students have to take the entranceexam to get GSEC Although these students only have to do a written test, all theteachers here have been trying their best to help their students in learningcommunicative skills well Both of them are aware of the importance and benefits
of using pair work, group work to help improve the communicative skills However,they have faced many challenges in organizing these techniques during lessons,such as large classes; noises; lazy and passive students, etc
For all the above mentioned reasons, I have decided to carry out a research
work in: “Techniques for organizing pair work and group work activities for
students at Ham Rong High School” This study is intended to make a small
contribution on how to use the pair work, group work effectively and successfully inEnglish teaching and learning practice in Viet Nam
1.2 Aims of the study:
This study is aimed at:
- Finding out the use of pair work and group work in English speaking classes
at Ham Rong High School
- Suggesting the useful techniques of pair work and group work to thestudents at Ham Rong High School in learning speaking English
1.3 Scope and objectives of the study:
To improve communicative skills for students at Ham Rong High School, theteachers can make use of various techniques and a number of things should be done.However, within the framework of a teaching experience, the author only intends todraw a brief overview of how are the pair work and group work used at Ham RongHigh School
Also, due to the time constraints, this study only involves a small number ofEnglish teachers and students at Ham Rong School
1.4 Methods of the study:
In order to find out the answers to the research questions, both quantitativeand qualitative methods were employed to carry out the study The data werecollected by means of questionnaires and interviews for English teachers and thestudents at Ham Rong High School
Besides that, reviewing the related documents from many published bookswritten by different authors and collecting information from others previous studiesare methods to establish the theoretical background of the study
1.5 Significance of the study:
This study is hoped to be used to both teachers and students at Ham RongHigh School This study has been able to contribute to teachers’ knowledge ofcommunicative language teaching, communicative activities in general and pairwork, group work in particular Besides that, from the finding of the study, teachers
Trang 5can be provided with important information which may be valuable for their futurelesson planning On the other hand, the teachers’ transformation in pair work andgroup work implementation will be beneficial to the students.
2 CONTENTS OF THE TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2.1 Theoretical background
* Interactions in speaking classes
- Definition of Classroom Interaction
Classroom interaction involves two main aspects, which are the negotiation
of meaning and feedback, if these two elements are not available in the classroom,then we cannot speak of a successful learning through interaction Ellis (1999:09)
says, “Interaction contributes to acquisition through the provision of negative
evidence and through opportunities for modified output.” Interaction then is rich of
meaning negotiation where the learners can receive feedback from theirinterlocutors
- Speaking skills in language teaching and learning
Among the four skills in learning English, speaking and writing are theproductive skills However, speaking is regarded as very important for languageteaching and learning Speaking is a bridge to reach other skills Speaking helpslearners to read better, to listen more effectively and write more accurately.Speaking is surely the most effective means of communication (Ur, 1996)
Speaking is a basic skill that language learners should master with the otherlanguage skills It is defined as a complex process of sending and receivingmessages through the use of verbal expressions, but it also involves non verbalsymbols such as gestures and facial expressions Hedge (2000: 261) defines
speaking as “a skill by which they [people] are judged while first impressions are
being formed.” That is to say speaking is an important skill which deserves more
attention in both first and second language because it reflects people’s thoughts andpersonalities
* Pair work and group work in speaking classes
- Definition of pair work
According to Adrian Doff (1988 :137), the whole class is divided in to pairs
by the teacher Every students works with his or her partner in pairs and all the pairswork at the same time (It is sometimes called simultaneous pair work) This is not
the same as ‘public’ or ‘open’, pair work, with pairs of students speaking in turn in
front of the class In fact, a pair work consists of two students working together atthe same time
There are two main types of pair work: fixed pairs and flexible pairs, given
by Byrne (1983) In the former, students work with the same partner to practice thetarget language In the later, students keep changing their partners they like Thismay make the activity more interesting but the class noisier
Trang 6It can be seen that pair work can get students to practice the target languagemore and increase students’ talking time in the class.
- Definition of group work
Doff (1988: 137) also defines group work as a process that “the teacher
divides the class into small groups to work together usually four or five students in each group, as in pair work, all the groups work at the same time”.
Like pair work, group work also gives students more opportunities to practicethe target language in the whole class In addition, students can work independentlyand freely under the teacher’s control without the pressure of the whole classwatching what they are doing
- Advantages of pair work and group work
Pair work and group work gives the students far more chances to speakEnglish in the classroom According to Michael Long and his colleagues (1985)who investigated differences in the quantity and quality of student language ingroup work versus teacher centered activities the language produced by studentsworking in groups is more varied and greater in quantity Learners take the initiative
to express themselves, they are more spontaneous Asking questions and respondingthey use more language functions
Working in pairs and groups is less stressful and more effective for students,especially introverts who needn't perform in the front of the whole class They feelmore confident working with the friend they like and are more likely to accepthis/her correction or criticism There are always more and less gifted pupils in theprocess of language learning and these methods prevent them from not being
laughed at by the whole class if they say something wrong "It is generally easier to
show that you do not know, or do not understand something, in a smaller group than in a large one” (Norman, Levihn and Hedenquist, 1986:8)
- Some common activities for pair work and group work
There are a variety of activities which can be applied in communicativeEnglish classes through the use of pair work and group work Some commonactivities are:
- Game: A game could be any activities that formalize a technique into units
that can be score in some way Guessing games are common language classroomactivities
- Role-play: Role-play minimally involves giving a role to one or more
members of a group and assigning an objective or purpose that participants mustaccomplish
- Drama: Drama is a more formalized form of role-play and simulation, with
a pre-planned story line and script Sometimes small groups may prepare their ownshort dramatization of some event, writing the script and rehearsing the scene as a
Trang 7group But they are time consuming and rarely can form part of a typical schoolcurriculum.
- Projects: Mainly for young learners who can greatly benefit from hands-on
approaches to language, certain projects can be rewarding indeed
- Interview: A popular activity for pair work, but also suitable for group
work, interviews are useful at all level of proficiency
- Information gap: This technique is one of the easiest and most interesting
forms of communicative activity in the speaking lesson Information-gap activitiesinclude a tremendous variety of techniques in which the objectives is to convey or
to request information
- Problem solving and decision making: Problem-solving techniques focus
on the group’s solution of a specified problem
- Decision-making techniques are simply one kind of problem-solving where
the ultimate goal is for students to make a decision Opinion exchange is a difficulttechnique for students to deal with at the beginning levels of proficiency, but by theintermediate level, certain techniques can effectively include the exchange ofvarious opinions
2.2 The reality of the study
2.2.1 Background of the study
Our school has got 11 teachers of English aged from between 33 to 58.Almost of them have at least ten years of teaching experience
Our current material of teaching English is the text-book Tieng Anh 10, 11,
12 by Education Publishing House This text-book is divided into sixteen units, each
of them has been divided into four parts in which “listening and speaking” part aims
at providing students the different topics and structures through listening andreading and requires them to practice speaking skills In each semester, studentshave to learn English in 3 periods per week
It can be seen that communication is the goal of English language learning.Its purpose is to help students develop their communicative competence Thismakes teaching and learning to improve students’ speaking skills to be an importantpart in any English course Like in many other schools, English teachers at HamRong High School find out the benefits of using pair and group work and spendmuch time to apply these techniques to develop students’ speaking skills However,
we have some problems such as: large classes; noises; lazy and passive students.The major concerns of this research are find out the useful techniques for organizingpair work and group work to help teachers and students in teaching and learningspeaking English
2.2.2 Methodology
-Participants
Trang 8The subjects of the study are 4 teachers of English who teach English for thegrade 10 students of Ham Rong High School They range from 33 to 45 years ofage The grade 10 students were randomly chosen from over 500 students of 12classes
-Research instruments
The instruments used to collect data was questionnaire and interview for theteachers and the students to get information about using pair-work, group-work inspeaking classes The first are the questionnaires for the students including 8questions written in Vietnamese, was administered to 110 students
2.2.3 Data analysis
The data of the study was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively Asfor quantitative analysis, we used descriptive statistics to quantify the data in form
of charts and figures The qualitative data were obtained from the interview
Table 1: Students’ opinions on speaking skill
Question
1
a It’s a compulsory subject in the curriculum 16 14,5
b Learning speaking English is to
Table 2: Students’ opinions on the way to learn speaking skill
Trang 9Questions Options Numbers of students Percent %
As can be seen from the table 2, (83,6%) of the students asked said that they likeworking in pairs and groups, whereas they had very little favor for workingindividually (20,9%) , only 14,5% of them liked working in whole class 30% ofstudents enjoyed answering the teacher’ questions and 40,9% liked listening andtaking note From this, it can be understood that most of the students see theimportance of working in pair and group for the better speaking skill This alsomeans that pair work and group work are surely the most suitable activities for thespeaking skill
Table 3: Students’ opinions on the impact of pair-work and group- work
Questions Options Numbers of students Percent %
d Shy and passive students have more
c It improves students’ motivation 85 77,3
e Students can learn from each other 80 72,7
It was obvious that almost all the students ( more than 70%) found that pairwork and group work were so beneficial for their speaking skill that they can speakmore in English, they can be much more confident and they also have chance toexpress themselves, their independence, cooperation and motivation in speakingwere improved Regarding the benefit of learning from each other of group work,72,7% (80 out of 110) the students stated that they learnt each other so much
Table 4: Students’ wishes about the partners in pair and group work
Trang 10About the students they preferred working with in pairs and in groups, most of thestudents wanted to work with the students who were at the same level or higherlevel of proficiency Working with the people they really liked was also preferred by10,9% Also, some of them (11,8%) liked working with the ones at the same table.However, few of them (9,1%) liked working with the students who were worse atEnglish.
Table 5: Students’ recommendation for the things the teacher should do
One very important thing which helps to improve group work activities is to get thestudents ideas about what the teachers should do about that It is quite clear that all
of them (100 %) wanted their teachers to minimize his/her talking time, to create acompetitive atmosphere, to give feedback, praise and encouragement and give clearinstruction But 60,9% wanted their teachers not to interrupt when they mademistakes 40,9 % would like their teacher to give enough necessary vocabulary andfunctional language for their activities
d Students sitting next or near to each other 13 11,8
e Students of the same interest 12 10,9
Questions Options/ Numbers of students Percent %
c Go round monitoring students’
performance and help if necessary 34 30,9
d Minimize teacher’s talking time 110 100
e not to interrupt when students’
f Always provide feedback, praise
Trang 11The bar chart bellow shows the students’ appreciation the improvement of theirlearning speaking English after the 1st semester of using pair work and group work.
Chart : Students’ response to pair work and group work activities (Question 7)
The data from Chart showed that more than half of the students (65.5 %)were interested in pair work and group work activities 18.2% of them even werevery interested in working in pairs and in groups This showed that pair work andgroup work could attract students and increased their interest in the lesson as well
On the other hand, 10.9% of students were not very interested and only 6 out
of 110 students found pair work and group work activities boring
From that, we can see the reasons why students don’t like working in pair andgroup are mainly on the ways of organizing pair and group work Therefore, it’svery necessary that teachers have to try their best to design those activitieseffectively
After the first semester of learning speaking English through pair work andgroup work, the following results were conducted from questionnaires andinterview 87 out of 110 students (79.1%) strongly agreed that working in pair andgroup could help their interest and participation in learning increased The reasonsare because of many benefits of pair work and group work, such as they felt moreconfident to speak, they helped each other to solve teacher’s problems, or they havemore chance to speak… 9.1% of students said that those activities were not usefulfor learning speaking as we can in the result of Question 5 On the other hand, some
of students (11.8%) showed the other opinions that pair work and group work wereeither helpful or unhelpful However, in the summary, it’s true that the pair workand group work are the beneficial techniques in learning speaking English at HamRong High School
For the benefit of pair and group work activities, 100% of them claimed thatpair and group work were very beneficial and helped students to increase thestudents’ speaking time, to promote students’ independence and cooperation, toimproves students’ motivation, to decrease the teacher speaking time and helps shyand passive students have more chance of expressing themselves and learn from
Trang 12each other They also gave some more benefits such as: to creates excitingatmosphere as it lends itself to game-like activities which frees the teacher fromhis/her hard role of “an expert who always lectures”, This proved that these twotechniques could increase students’ participation and interest in the class
2.3 Teachers’ implementation of pair-work, group-work in current classes as teaching experience
Regarding the activities the teachers chose for pair and group work, Roleplaying, Games, Interview, Information gap, Discussing, Opinion exchange are themost frequently in which discussing helps to elicit the students’ ideas, backgroundknowledge, role play helps to make the students understand the nature of Englishand games help them to do the group work activities without any pressure andstress The students may think that they are playing not just learning 75 % of theteachers used Projects, problem- solving and only 25% of teachers used dramabecause they thought that those activities was only suitable for the high level ofEnglish proficiency and took much time to prepare