The usage of role play technologies in developing pupils discourse competence. Abstract

Pair work and group work as patterns of classroom interaction in role-play
Role-playing, as mentioned before, is an activity that involves at least two students. Regardless of the number of learners involved in the exercise, pair work and group work are the patterns of classroom interaction which are the subject of this part of chapter two. In pair work, students have both the possibility to practice the language or study a text together. Working in a pair dramatically boosts the amount of time devoted to speaking any student can receive in the class. Moreover, it also allows students to work and interact independently without the necessary help from the teacher, hence it promotes the learner’s autonomy. Pair work also gives an educator a possibility to work with one pair while the other learners continue speaking. To add more, students learn to share responsibility and such a classroom interaction pattern promotes cooperation which helps the classroom to be a more likeable place. However, there are some bad points about pair work. stresses the fact that many teachers and even students may dislike it and to add more, working with a partner can be noisy. Therefore, educators keep thinking that they may lose power over their class and do not let learners work in pairs too often. Another disadvantage is switching to L1. As there is no teacher control and students work on their own, they may talk in their mother tongue rather than in the target language. Group-based learning is used on a large scale in many forms of teaching. Firstly, it changes the interactional dynamics in the classroom and increases students‟ talking time. Altering the classroom interaction is important because it prevents learners from getting bored when working still on their own. There is also a greater opportunity of different opinions and varied involvements than in pair work, and it encourages learner’s autonomy by allowing students to make their own choices within the group, without being told what to do. Similarly, to a pair work, group work is likely to be an interaction pattern which is typical of full of noise. Some teachers may feel that they lose control over the whole class. In addition, not all learners enjoy group work since they would prefer to be the focus of the teacher’s interest rather than work with their classmates. Occasionally, students find themselves in a not pleasant clique and they wish they could work with somebody else. Finally, setting up such activities contains a number of challenges: “putting students into group may be time consuming, students often seat themselves in cliques by age, language group, friendship, and so on (…), low-level students may have difficulty following instructions or be intimidated working in a group with stronger students.