Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition
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Learning English in the Secondary School
179 Learning English in the Secondary School 180 work, and these are discussed elsewhere in this chapter, but they also relate partly to the classroom procedures which are used. When teaching large classes, particularly, the teacher has to think very carefully about the most appropriate ways of enabling every pupil to participate as fully as possible in the lesson. In planning his teaching, he has to decide at each stage on the answers to two main questions. The first is—Do I want the whole class to be doing exactly the same piece of work at the same time? and the second is—Do I want them all to be working as one group, centred on me or the blackboard, or do I want them to be working in a number of independent groups? Note that these are not two versions of the same question: there will be many occasions when the class may usefully work in small groups, all simultaneously practising the same piece of language or preparing the same piece of written work. Let us first of all consider the advantages of breaking the class into small groups. Many of the advantages of breaking the class down into smaller units are general educational ones, but some of them proceed from the nature of language itself and are especially important in language teaching. For example, if we want to develop natural conversational ability, we are far more likely to achieve this by means of face-to-face contact in small groups than through speeches made in public in front of the whole class—the more informal the situation, the more natural the interaction. We also need to recognise that the use of language—even a foreign language—is a very intimate activity for the user, and it is much easier to develop the necessary confidence in a comparatively private situation than in the public gaze of the full class: the art of addressing a large group, as any teacher knows, is very different from that of talking privately. But at the same time a number of other benefits result from working in small groups. The groups provide much more intensive opportunities for practice than any full class situation can, and they are potentially much more flexible. It is harder for a lazy pupil to opt out of group activity than out of full class activity, and pupils can learn a great deal from each other—far more than most people suppose. In some ways, however, group work poses problems which not all teachers are happy to face. It is often argued that Learning English in the Secondary School 181 classes become too noisy, that (in mono-lingual situations) they are liable to use the mother tongue, and that it is not possible for the teacher to check the accuracy of the work which is being carried out in groups. While it is perfectly true that bad use of groupwork can result in all these problems arising, it must be borne in mind what the advantages are, and particularly the advantage in intensity of work. What teacher can truthfully say that everyone is concentrating, even for three-quarters of the time when a large class is being taught as a full group? Yet it is easy to achieve concentration for most of the time with well organised group activities. The most important points to remember are that the class should be introduced to group work procedures gently, that the activities should be clearly related to the aim of the lesson, and that the reasons for working in groups should be made absolutely clear. Given these conditions, there are very few occasions when teaching will not be more effective in small groups than in whole-class work. Consider again the example on p. 13. Thus the teacher may start by presenting a new item to the whole class, may follow with a very rapid choral practice to reinforce the pattern, and then immediately ask the class to practise repeating the pattern in pairs, each one checking carefully that the other is getting it right. (Note that one of the advantages of working like this is that pupils gain practice in correcting and helping each other.) This activity need not last longer than two or three minutes and should be stopped before this if the task has been completed or if the class is losing interest and not doing it properly. This routine may be followed by a little more full-class work, with more short sessions of pairs practice, and may lead into a communicative game to be played in groups of three or four, or alternatively may be followed by written work which can be prepared in groups and then written individually, or—if the teacher is confident that they will be able to do it successfully—written individually and then revised and corrected in pairs or groups. During all this process the teacher will go round the groups, encouraging, checking that everyone is doing the task properly, helping those in difficulty, and generally being available for consultation. Learning English in the Secondary School 182 All in all, even with teaching sessions of an hour or more, the break from full-class to small-group to individual work means a reduction of monotony and an increase in pupil concentration. It is also possible to use the small group system to enable pupils to work at different levels during the same lesson. In schools where there is a very wide range of ability within the same class this has sometimes been successful but it can lead, if badly planned, to undesirable results. It is not generally a good idea to break a class into more or less permanent groupings of good and less good unless there is an enormous divergence between groups (as perhaps when half the class has come from English-medium primary schools and the other half has not). Even in these extreme situations the educational disadvantage of establishing a permanent feeling of inferiority in the less good group may outweigh the short- term advantage of enabling the fast group to rush on without being slowed up by the other. Perhaps the ideal situation is when the teacher is able to persuade the class to work in mixed ability small groups so that the good students can— for part of the time at least—help those who are less competent. In fact, though, such an extreme situation is very rare and in few classes are the differences between the two halves so great that they are not better off working together than working apart. Particularly in exercises which are aiming at fluency rather than accuracy there are great advantages in mixing abilities, for it is not necessarily the pupil with the best formal knowledge of English who is the most skilful communicator. None the less, there are occasions when pupils should be allowed to advance at their own pace, particularly with extensive reading, and there is certainly a place in the classroom for individualised programmes, based, for example, on reading laboratories or work-cards which enable particular difficulties to be dealt with by the pupils who are affected by them. |
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