Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Learning English in the Secondary School
179

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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

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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.

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Learning English in the Secondary School
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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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