Pair Work.

                                                    Pair Work

                  Pair Work  VS.  Group Work

Teacher can enable his learners to wotk individually, then jumps  to enabling every 2 leareners to work in pairs.  Other paIrs work and practise till they form 5 groups of 5 learners each to create work groups, then the teacher can do the opposite to change from working in groups to working in pairs then individual work.

1-Individual Work:

 In individual type of student work, the benefits are that students work at their own pace, they are confident about what they know and what they need to send more time on, they can use their preferred learning styles and strategies. The disadvantage is that students don't get the benefit of learning from peers as well as working with their peers. Individual type of student work is suitable when teacher wants students to do their final task or assignment.

2-Pair Work:

In paired type of student work, the advantages are that students have the chance to work with and learn from their peers; struggling students can learn from more capable peers; it is especially useful for students who prefer interpersonal learning settings. There are challenges involved in paired work. If students are not matched up well (i.e. low students together, high students together, a higher student with a low student but they don't work well together, etc.) pair work won't be useful; the ability of the students to work in this way needs to be taken into consideration. Paired work is suitable in inductive learning activities in which instead of explaining a given concept and following this explanation with examples, the teacher presents students with many examples showing how the concept is used. The intent is for students to notice by way of the examples, how the concept works. As a conclusion to the activity, the teacher can ask the students to explain the rule as a final check that they understand the concept.

Kinds of Pairwork:

1-Open Teacher / student pair work.

2-Open Student / student pair work.

3-Closed pair work.

3-Group Work

Group type of student work also have benefits and challenges. It involve benefits such as it provides more opportunity for practice, an increased variety of activities is possible and an increased student creativity. The challenges may be that as with pair work, the groups must be carefully selected to ensure students can work productively; not all students are able to work to their full potential in this situation; assessment of student progress can be challenging.  By dividing the class into groups students get more opportunities to talk than in full class organization and each student can say something. The teachers working with large classes should divide them into five groups which is the most effective organization for practising speaking.  When learners work in pairs or groups, it is impossible for the teacher to listen and correct all the mistakes they make and this is not the purpose of the activity. However, he/she can reduce the number of mistakes before the students start working by demonstrating the activity to the class first and by asking pairs or groups to perform in front of the class afterwards and discussing what they said and pointing out the most common mistakes.

Kinds of Group Work

1-Open Teacher / Group work.

2-Open Work Group/ Work Group.

The advantages of pair work and small group work

• Gives learners more speaking time
• Changes the pace of the lesson
• Takes the spotlight off you and puts it onto the children
• Allows them to mix with everyone in the group
• Gives them a sense of achievement when reaching a team goal
• Teaches them how to lead and be led by someone other than the teacher.
• Allows you to monitor, move around the class and really listen to the language they are producing.

Pitfalls and how to avoid them

• You could lose control of the class. Set up a signal before you start, like a visual time out with your hands, so that they know when to stop. Don’t shout for them to stop as they will just shout louder!

• You are not able to listen to everyone at once and hear what they are saying – set up groups of three where A and B talk while C monitors. Then swap roles. They are producing language; you just want to make sure the language they are producing is English. Have a fun system of every mother tongue word you hear the monitor must stand up and then stay standing. The activity stops if all monitors are standing. This will make them aware of using English as much a possible and using their first language as little as possible.

• The classroom will get very noisy. This is OK, as long as they aren’t shouting. Move them into different places in the room so that they can hear themselves speak.

How to set up pair and group work

• Be sure to explain the procedure before splitting the class up.

• Always demonstrate either yourself of with the help of a volunteer exactly what they have to do.

• Ask them to tell you what they have to do before they do it (in their mother tongue if need be) to check their understanding.

• Have fill in activities ready for the quick finishers – but be sure that they have completed the task correctly first and haven’t just finished early because they misunderstood what they had to do.

• Don’t forget to have feedback time after pair work so that the children don’t feel that they have been wasting time. It’s important to share their work as a whole group although this doesn’t have to be systematic.

• Set a clear time limit.

• Control who works with who so children aren’t always being dominated or dominating others.

                       Activities which lend themselves to pair work

• Roll the ball
  This can be used to practise any language that requires a question/answer pattern. They can roll the ball to each other and have to say the appropriate sentence as they roll the ball. E.g. 'Hello.' 'Hello.' 'What’s your name?' etc. Remember the sentences they practise should be fairly short.

• Information gap
  Give each pair a picture. The pictures should be nearly the same with two or three elements missing from each picture. Without showing each other the pictures they should describe the missing objects. They will practise colour, prepositions of place, and adjectives such as big, small, etc. Then they can compare their pictures.

• Telephone conversations
  Sitting back to back they can practise telephone language or just simple exchanges that don’t have to be connected to the telephone itself. Sitting back to back should arouse their interest and help train them with listening skills. It’s a challenge, but a fun one!
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View Resources:

1-Pair counting to improve grammar and spoken fluency.

2-Teaching Toolbox, Reconciling theory, practice and language.
3-Teaching Listening skills to young learners "listen and do songs."

View Other Resources:

1-Online Corpus-based Learner Dictionary.
2-CBI Teachers. Content-based Instruction.
3-Film Circles:Scaffolding Speaking For EFL Students.

4-Writing for the Reader: A problem- solution approach.

5-Integrating language skills through dictogloss procedure.