ADVANTAGES OF GROUP WORK
Whatever form the group work takes on your course, the opportunity to work with others,
rather than on your own, can provide distinct benefits. Groups that work well together can
achieve much more than individuals working on their own. A broader range of skills can be
applied to practical activities and sharing and discussing ideas can play a pivotal role in
deepening your understanding of a particular subject area. Being part of a team will help you
develop your interpersonal skills such as speaking and listening as well as team working skills
such as leadership, and working with and motivating others. Some of these skills will be useful
throughout your academic career and all are valued by employers. Collaborating with others will
help identify your own strengths and weaknesses. Enhanced self-awareness will both help your
approach to learning and will be invaluable when you come to write your CV or complete job
application forms.
GROUP WORK GENERATES INTERACTIVE LANGUAGE
Group work helps to solve the problemof classes that are too large to offer many
opportunities to speak by increasing individual practice time.
GROUP WORK OFFERS AN EMBRACING AFFECTIVE CLIMATE
A second important advantage offered by group work is the security of a smaller group of
students where each individual is not soo starky on public display, vulnerable to what student
may pecieve as criticsm and rejection.
GROUP WORK PROMOTES LEARNER RESPONSIBILITY
While a small group is an affirming context, it also by nature demands responsibility. Each
student is an important element in contributing to the success of a task and one cannot easily
“hide” in such context.
GROUP WORK IS A STEP TOWARD INDIVIDUALIZING INSTRUCTION
Group can help students with varying abilities to accomplish separate group.
IMPLEMENTING GROUP WORK IN YOUR CLASSROOM
CLASSROOM LANGUAGE
One of the first considerations in implementing group work is to ascertain than your students
have an appropriate command of classroom language with which to carry out the group task that
you have in mind.
PAIR WORK VERSUS GROUP WORK
Pair work is harder to monitor than group work because there are going to be many more
pairs of students than groups of students. Be sure that everyone has a very clear understanding of
the material before beginning any activity. The best way to monitor students working in pairs or
groups is to walk around the classroom during the activity correcting students who make
mistakes and answering questions.
GROUP WORK TECHNIQUES
We can learn about the group work techniques in many ways such as games, role-play and
simulations, drama, projects, interview, brainstorming, information gap, jigsaw, problem solving
and decision making, or opinion exchange.
PLANNING AND INITIATING GROUP WORK TASKS
Making planning and initiating group work task by introducing the techniques, justify the use
of small group for the techniques, get a modelthe techniques, give explicit detailed instructions,
and divide the class into groups.
MONOTORING THE TASK
You can inform how your groups are working through informal conversations, or by
measuring their performance against criteria. Are members contributing equally? Are they
listening to each other? Is the group using effective planning processes? With this information,
you can help groups function more effectively. Circulate among the groups/monitor online,
listening, observing, asking questions and evaluating students’ understanding of concepts and
tasks. This can give you a sense of the group’s progress, and steer them back to the task if they
have strayed.
DEBRIEFING (PROCESSING) THE TASK
Debriefing is a report of a mission or project or the information so obtained. It is a structured
process following an exercise or event that reviews the actions taken. As a technical term, it
implies a specific and active intervention process that has developed with more formal meanings
such as operational debriefing.
