Organizing pair work and group work in speaking lessons

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO THANH HÓA
TRƯỜNG THPT YÊN ĐỊNH 3
SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM
ORGANIZING PAIR WORK AND GROUP WORK IN SPEAKING LESSONS
 Người thực hiện: Đỗ Thị Thủy
 Chức vụ: Giáo viên
 SKKN thuộc môn: Tiếng Anh
THANH HÓA NĂM 2017
Table of contents
Page
Introduction 
Reasons for choosing the topic ....
Purposes of the study
Objects of the study......
Methods of the study
Contents .
Theoretical background.
Definition of pair work and group work..
Pair and group activities in a speaking lesson.
Advantages and disadvantages of pair work and group work.
The use of pair work and group work in speaking lessons at Yen Dinh 3 High School .
How to organize pair work and group work effectively..
Preparation for pair or group work. 
Steps in the classroom.
Steps for organizing pair or group work in a speaking lessons.
Sample speaking lesson plan applying pair work and group work..
Effects of the study on teaching and learning..
Conclusion .
Conclusion 
Recommendation .
References 
Appendice
2
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3
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INTRODUCTION
Reasons for choosing the topic
 In recent decades, it is undeniable that English has become a primary medium of international communication in commerce, transportation, banking, tourism, technology, aviation, diplomacy, scientific research etc,. As a result, Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training has adopted English as a compulsory subject at schools, colleges and universities since 1990s. However, most of the students have still been confused with the demand of communicative competence, which derives basically from the lack of the opportunities to practice, the limited exposure to the real language interferences, and especially the lack of suitable teaching and learning methods. They are mainly taught with the traditional method – Grammar Translation Method which focuses on academic study of grammar; subsequently, students are discouraged from promoting their overall communicative competence.
 Since the onset of the communicative era, speaking has been perceived as the most fundamental skill to acquire and also the ultimate goal of language training; therefore, its development has become the focus of attention of both teachers and students. However, helping students to achieve proficiency in English language speaking in such Vietnamese classroom conditions faces a number of difficulties. Fistly, classes are at large size. Secondly, most students have low motivation to learn English. Besides, materials do not fulfill students’ need because many topics for speaking in the course book do not relate much to students’ everyday conversations and hardly reflect the variety of oral communication in real life situations. Moreover, many students are too shy to speak in English lessons. They may have difficulty taking part in the conversations because they suffer from saying something wrong or incomprehensible and losing face in front of their teacher or peers. Last but not least, students find it easier to express themselves in their mother tongue than in English, so if they are not instructed carefully, they will not try to express their ideas in English.
According to Nunan (2003), one of the main principles for teaching speaking skill is that ‘teacher increase students’ talking time by letting students practice in pair or group and limit teacher’s talking time’. Pairwork and groupwork has long been applied in teaching but in fact the majority of students are still afraid of speaking lessons. So what is the main cause for this – that is also the reason why I choose the topic “ Organizing pairwork in speaking lessons” to study with the hope of trying to find out the better way to teaching speaking lessons effectively 
Purposes of the study.
This study is aimed at:
Investigating the use of pair work and group work in speaking lessons at Yen dinh 3 High School.
Pointing out the benefits and challenges of using pair and group work activities 
Suggesting some effective ways of using pair and group work in speaking lessons
Objects of study
 As mentioned above, the study focusses on finding out the frequency of using pair and group work in speaking lessons as well as the methods applied to improve students’ speaking skill in the speaking lessons. Besides, the researcher makes an attempt to find out the advantages and disadvantages of pair and group work in speaking lessons as well as suggest the effective ways and methods of using pair and group work to teach this skill. The study is carried out on forty two grade – ten students at Yen Dinh 3 High School in Yen Dinh district and four English teachers there.
Methods of the study
To realize the aims of the study, the reseacher has used both quantitative and qualitative methods. The theoretical background of the study comes from a lot of published books by famous researchers in the field. The data for the charts has been collected through survey questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS software.
CONTENTS
2.1. Theoretical background
2.1.1. Definition of pair work and group work
 The definitions of pair work have been developed over the years with the contribution of a great number of linguistics and are brought together by Doff (1988): ‘In pair work, the teacher divides the whole class into pairs. Every student works with his or her partner in pairs, and all the pairs work 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.”
 The definition of pairwork in this case is an activity that gives students a chance to talk to each other, practice language together, study a text, research language or take part in information-gap activities. They can write dialogues, predict the content of reading texts, or compare notes on what they have listen or seen.
 In general, there are two main types of pairwork, fixed pairs and flexible pairs, suggested by Byrne (1983). The first type is when the students work with the same partner in order to complete task. In this kind of pairs, they will deeply understand each other and know the other’s ability. Meanwhile, the second one is when students keep changing their partners. They can lift the chair freely to talk to any partner they like, which makes the activity more interesting.
 In group work, the teacher divides the class into small groups of four or five students to work together and all the groups work at the same time just as in pair work (Doff 1988: 137). In this setting, students are assigned a task that involves “collaboration and self-initiated language” (Brown 2001:177), then students have opportunities to speak and altogether take the responsibility to pursue the common goals. 
2.1.2. Pair and group activities in a speaking lesson.
 According to Brown (2001), appropriate pair activities include Dialogues, Questions and Answers, Drills, Quick Brainstorming. Pair work enables teachers to engage students in interactive communication for a short period of time with minimum of logistical problems. Typical group tasks are Games, Role – play and simulations, Drama, Projects, Interview, Brainstorming, Information gap, Jigsaw, Problem solving and decision making, and Option exchange.
 Byrne (1991: 36-102) suggests some more activities for pair and group work. In his opinion, pair work can be used for Controlled converstion, Questionnaires and Quizzes, Find a partner whereas group work for Discussion, Interpretation activities, Planning activities, Invention activities and Project activities.
 Moreover, Doff (1988: 211) adds Exchanging personal information activity for pair work and Guessing games activity for group work.
 Perhaps the list of activities for pair work and group work is still lengthened by many other researchers. For the limitation of this study, some most popular ones will be focused on.
Games
 A game could be any activity formalizing a technique into units that can be scored. For example, students can practice twenty questions through a guessing game in whicj one member secretly decides he/ she is some famous person; the rest of of the roup has to find out who, within twenty yes/no questions, with each member of the group taking turns asking questions. The person who is “it” rotates around the group and points are scored.
Information gap
 In this activity, students are supposed to be working in pairs. One student will have the information that other partner does not have and the partners will share their information. This activity serves the purposes of solving a problem, collecting information etc,.
Role play
 Role play involves giving a role to each member of the group and assigning an objective that participants must accomplish. In pair, for example, student A is an employer; student B is a prospective employee; the objective is for A to interview B. Or a group role – play might involve a discussion of a political issue, with each person assigned to represent a particular political point of view.
Interview
 Students work in pairs or in groups of three or four to conduct interviews on a list of topics based on the theme and content in the textbook. In each pair/ group, one is the interviewer and the other(s) will be the interviewee(s). Their tasks are to prepare questions for the interview and to answer them in a given period of time. When time is over, each pair/ group will be called on to present their results to the class.
Problem solving
 Students are requested to find out the solutions to a specified problem which might be relatively simple (such as giving direction on a map), moderately complex ( such as working out an itinerary from a train, plane, bus schedules), or quite complex ( such as solving a mistery in a crime story)
Discussion 
 In group discussions, students should always be encouraged to work into small groups of four or five to ask questions, paraphrase ideas, express support, check for clarification and so on. This activity is often carried out after students have completed a content –based lesson under teacher’s control to gain the general knowledge of the topic.
Advantages and disadvantages of pair work and group work.
Advantages of using pair and group work activities.
Brumfit says that pair work and group work are the most effective techniques of classroom organiztion which combine aspect of communication learning and natural interaction in a stress free environment (Brumfit, 1984: 78)
 Pair work and group work give students more opportunities to speak English in classroom. Students participate in the lesson much more actively because they are involved in talking to their friends, exchaging opinions, practising new stuctures more than listening to their teacher talking. By dividing the class into groups, students get more chances to talk than in full class organzation, thus each student can say something. Penny Ur recommends that teachers working with larger classes should divide them into five groups which is the most effective organization for practising speaking. (Ur, 1996:232)
 Students may feel less anxious when they are working in a group with a small number of people. Particularly, timid students find it hard to speak in front of the class and teacher in their eyes seem to be fear. They become silent and cannot think of anything to say. However, when participating in pairs or groups, they may find it easier to share their opinions.
 Besides practising and consolidating the language, pair work and group work help to integrate the class. Students learn how to cooperate with one another, make compromise, negotiate, and respect individual with different abilities and views, which is important for the class atmosphere and relationship with the teacher. Instead of sitting alone passively listen to the others, they can help each other and contribute to the success of a lesson. In such a class, the teacher is no longer a supervisor but become a resource center and advisor for the students.
Disadvantages of using pair work and group work activities.
Gross (1993: 67) also points out clearly disadvantages of using pair work and group work activities as follow:
 Some teachers are reluctant to use pair or group work being afraid of noise or discipline problems which might occur particularly. Indeed students make noise while working on the task; they discuss things, check words and communicate with one another. However, it is so-called “positive noise” and it does not disturb the students. They are concentrating on their task so they do not hear it. If an activity goes on for too long; students, especially the poor ones make noise because they become bored, they want to get the teacher’s intention and they become disruptive.
 Another disadvantage of using pair or group work activities is making mistakes. Some teachers neglect to use pair or group work saying that students make mistakes trying to express their own ideas. Indeed, incorectness is a problem yet in real life, it is communicative fluency that matters not accuracy, so we should not be concerned too much with accuracy if we want to practice oral skills. According to Doff (1998:141), when learners work in pairs, it is impossible for the teacher to listen and correct all the mistakes they make and it is also not the purpose of this activity. However, he or she can reduce the number of mistakes before the students start working by demonstrating the activity to the class first and by asking pairs to perform in front of the class afterwards and discussing what they said and pointing out the most common mistakes.
The use of pair work and group work in speaking lessons at Yen dinh 3 High School.
 I have conducted a survey to find out the real information about the application of pair work and group work in speaking lesson at Yen dinh 3 High School through two survey questionnaires; one for four English teachers and one for 40 grade-ten students (see the Appendices). The followings are the results of the survey when I started carried out this survey.
Table 1. Teachers’ frequency of using pair work and group work in speaking lessons
The pie chart shows that half of the teachers often use pair work and group work activities to teach students. Twenty percent always use this method and the rest often organize this activity. Therefore, it is clear that, pair work and group work play an important role in teaching English at Yen Dinh 3 High School.
Table 2: Kinds of pair work and group work activities used in speaking lessons
 With four options for the teachers to select in the survey questionnaire: Dialogue, Role play, Games and Other activities to answer the question about kinds of pair work and group work they often use to teach speaking skill, only two options have been selected. Most of them use Dialogue and only one uses Role play and no one mentions any other kinds of pair work and group work. So we can see that more activities should be applied to enhance the effect of the speaking lessons.
 Moreover, with the last question in the survey for teacher, all of them confirm that pair work and group work are very effective in speaking lessons.
Table 3. Students’ feelings when taking part in pair and group work in speaking 
Excited
Nervous
Timid
Bored
Number 
6
25
8
3
Percentage (%)
14,3
59,5
19
7,2
 It is illustrated in the table that most of the students feel nervous when they are assigned tasks in the speaking lessons. Nineteen percent are still timid and only 14,3 percent of the students are excited with pair or group activities. The rest feel bored with these activities. 
 Table 4 below illustrates the frequency of taking part in pair work and group work activities. The majority of the students sometime join in these activities, which acounts for 85.7 percent. Six of them often do so and noone chooses ‘Always’ or ‘Never’ option. 
Always
Often
Sometime
Never
Number
0
6
36
0
Percentage
0
14.3
85,7
0
Table 4: The frequency of participating in pairwork and group work among students
 Answering the last questions in the survey for the students about their attitude towards the frequency of pair and group work activities, most of them hope that pair work and group work will be organized more often so that they can practise speaking English better
 Through the survey, it is clear that pair work and group work have been used to teach speaking lessons. However, very few kinds of these activities are applied and students are sometime involved in. Besides, when taking part in pair or group work, many students still feel nevous or timid. Therefore, the question is that how to enhance the effect of pair and group work in speaking lessons to improve students’ speaking ability.
How to organize pair work and group work effectively.
Preparation for pair or group work. 
 In order to prepare for pair or group work, according to Littlewood (1981) the teacher needs to do the following:
Select the activity
Prepare any physical material for pair or group work ahead of time
Anticipate the size and the selection of pairs or groups
Anticipate how students will be organized within the pairs or groups (tasks and roles)
Consider the timing of the pair or group work
Consider how the pair or group work will be shared with the entire class and linked with the overall curriculm
Steps in the classroom
Select the activity
An activity that is best suited for pair work and group work may meet the following criteria:
 The activity has multiple tasks that can be shared among pair or groupmembers or a single task, such as generating ideas, that benefit from the articipation of all individuals within a pair or group.
The activity involves problem solving and discussion.
Examples of activities that may be suited for pair or group work are investigations of materials (newspapers, scientific specimens) and development of ideas or arguments
Preparation for materials
 The teacher will need to personally collect, or organize students to collect, physical specimens for investigation. For example, if the teacher anticipates doing a lesson on the role of the media, she or he might ask the students to bring into class newspapers and magazines. There should be materials sufficient for each pair.
Size and selection of pairs or groups
 Pair size normally ranges between two students. Group size can sometimes go larger although groups larger than 8 do not ensure that everyone will participate.
 Pair membership can be determined in different ways. A random selection might be done by “counting off” with students (go around th room systematically having students count 1,2, etc., with each number representing a pair or selecting pairs on the basis of birth date.
 Sometimes pairs are organized for one activity. Other times, teachers use pairs for series of activities, so that students get used to working with one another.
Organize students within the pair
 A laissez-faire approach to pairwork would be that the teacher gives a general assignment to the pair - such as organize a research project on ‘qualities of a good leader’ – and the students are left to organize the pair or group work themselves.
 A highly structured approach would be that the teacher assigns a specific role to each pair or group member. Depending upon the task, the role might include ‘materials handler’, ‘scribe’, ‘reporter to the pair’ and so on. A semi-structured approach might be that the teacher recommend certain roles, but leaves it to the pair or group to assign roles.
 A more structured approach, with rotation of tasks within a pair or group, is often used with younger students. A less structured approach can be used with students having experience in pair or group work or for simple tasks that do not require students to take on different roles.
Time the pair and group work
The teacher should anticipate student que