Importance of Group Work in the ESL Classroom

Importance of separate Work in the ESL schoolroomIntroductionThe field of precept side to Speakers of Other wrangles (ESOL) is a rapidly expanding area within UK settings, in state-funded and in private educational arenas, and because of the ever-changing nature of immigration, ESOL teachers are ch totallyenged with meeting the demands of divers(a) and complicated ethnic/linguistic pigeonholings (Chan, 1998). Learning slope is seen as a necessity for immigrants or farsighted term visitors to the UK, although the field is complicated by political debates and social banters slightly funding, socialisation, naturalisation and the erosion of traditional finishings and expressions. However, it does seem that oral intercourse fluency in English is separate to tight-laced desegregation into British society, and is support by the UK Governments policy response to refugees and sanctuary seekers as verbotenlines in the egg white Paper Secure Borders, Safe Haven Integration and Diversity in Modern Britain (Home Office, 2002) which set out proposals for a curriculum of English language, IT and citizenship classes for refugees and asylum seekers (Morrice (2007) p 156). tour of duty the Therefore, it is essential that ESOL provision is not however proposed, and is designed in ship lay slightlyal which bum encourage learners to acquire concrete proficiency and fluency, without disempowering people or undermining their nationality (Halliday, 2005).The belles-lettres on the pedagogies of ESOL teaching is diverse and outlines ways in which randomness language acquisition ordure be facilitated impellingly, with teachers having their own take on pedagogy and on the ways in which students achievement, alone or with each conventioner(a), in information English (Dagenais et al, 2008 Burns, 2006). While linguistics studies directly address issues of grammar, syntax, construction, coherence and cohesion, the more practical aspects of evolution practi cal fluency in English for speakers of other languages relate to schoolroom strategies that can support this. This canvass exit explore 2 aspects of ESOL teaching, that of base operation, in which ESOL students are encouraged to move around together on key tasks, with the aim of improving fluency (Haneda, 2005), and the provision of feedback, either associate feedback or inculcate feedback, to enhance fluency. Both are contentious issues, because they can spell difficulties in the management of training experiences (Holliday, 2005), and could be seen positively or forbidly. This essay will look at around of the literature on this subject, and sweat to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of base or collaborative work, and of contrasting types of feedback. The author will then draw conclusions from the literature to inform ESOL teaching practise.DiscussionGroup work is a popular means of building on constructivist theories and pedagogies by supporting students to apply new knowledge in given situations. In ESOL teaching, it provides opportunities to practice new words, conversations, sentence constructions, and functional elements of communication, such as qualification a particular type of telephone call or initiating a conversation. However, base work in this context can be viewed negatively as good, partly because of a fear that meetings with the same first language will simply lapse into their own tongue rather than always speaking English, and that as learners they will not recognise each others mistakes. The latter point will be dealt with in some more detail below, in the exploration of types of feedback. But in coincidence to free radical work, types of collaborative or group learning or practice have been shown to be of great benefit to students of English.Some authors have make that orthodontic braces work or small group work in this context does suffice improve language fluency and competence (Long, 1996 pica em et al, 1996), perhaps because these activities provide different opportunities and options for ESOL learners which are not possible during teacher-led activities. These students may find themselves able to become more confident in a setting which is not only smaller, just now comprises only confederates who are besides ESOL students. Johnson 91995) argues that learners who interact and engage with each other in these ways purport more self-efficacy and control over their own learning. However, others argue that small group work in companion-only groups does not necessarily help with issues such as pronunciation (Morley, 1991) and proper grammar (Widodo, 2006 Widdowson, 1978). Another particular issue for group work is that of English intonation, which can be particularly difficult and may guide for some the last hurdle of English fluency and comprehension (Atoye, 2005 Morgan, 1997).McDonough (2004) carried out a small-scale investigate take which explored instructors and learn ers perceptions about the use of mate and small group activities in a siamese connection EFL context, and examined whether the learning opportunities theoretically attributed to pair and small group activities occurred in an intact classroom (p 207). The occupy also looked at whether the learners showed improved outcomes (McDonough, 2004). McDonough (2004) fix that learners who had more participation during the pair and small group activities demonstrated improved production of the target forms, blush though they did not perceive the activities as useful for learning language (p 207). This would suggest that these activities cleverness improve elements of fluency and skill, but this study does not demonstrate how this occurs, nor does it look in detail at language fluency, which is our cite here.Li and Campbell (2008) carried out a study in New Zealand whichexamined Asian students perceptions of the much-promulgated cooperative learning concepts in the form of group work and g roup assignments, and found that Asian students valued highly the significance of classroom group discussions where they could interact with students from other cultures and backgrounds, improve their English-language skills, enhance their pagan understanding and provide them with opportunities to make friends (P 203). Again, this underlines social elements of group working in ESOL learning which may be important in underdeveloped true fluency, because the elements of language skills and enhancing pagan understanding can be think to development of deeper-level fluency. Not all the outcomes of this study were positive, however, and LI and Campbell (2008) also found that these Asian students held intensely negative views about group assignments that claimd students to complete a project as a group with shared marks determined by the exploit of the group (p 207). This may have something to do with the learner predilections of these students, or it may have to do with other factor s. Li and Campbell (2008) found that contributing factors modify group dynamics included members attitudes and willingness to cooperate and contribute as a team, the composition of the group, students competing demands on students time and attention, heterogeneity from the natural abilities of students, and the varying cultural values and beliefs held by group members (p 207). Because Li and Campbell (2008) found that group assignments that were assessed seemed to disempower the students in their study, it would suggest that group activities which are collaborative have a different meaning than group activities which are assessed, and this should be taken into account when applying group working to ESOL classrooms. However, the study does suggest the group learning itself enhanced efficacy level (Li and Campbell, 2008). The negative responses to the group assessment activities may have had something to do with students preconceptions or expectations about their ESOL learning (Bord ia et al, 2006). Expectations which are not fulfilled might negatively affect responses to and evaluations of these learning activities (Bordia et al, 2006). These expectations, of course, may originate in the background, culture and previous experiences of the learner, which would suggest that teachers pack to take into account these kinds of expectations and find ways to address them.Ewal (2004) describes a study which focuses on the student perspective on group work, in which 21 students and their teachers participated in a collaborative forum in which they explored the use of small group work in their L2 classroom. (p 163). This study found that by engaging students, in an almost metacognitive way, in learning about how the group work affected their learning and behaviour, the students were able to listen the benefits of group work for themselves, in improving their literacy and fluency, and in supporting confederate bonding, confidence and self-efficacy (Ewal, 2004). In thi s study, small group behaviours changed as the students became certified of these behaviours and of the functions of the group and the class as a whole (Ewal, 2004). This demonstrates that while group work is still viewed along pedagogical lines as a requisite of proper learning, through and through application and testing of knowledge, the dynamics of group work require some attention, and may act as militating or mediating factors in the speciality of group activities. Ewal (2004) concludes that teachers should be attentive to opportunities to discuss language learning and classroom-related issues with their students (p 175). This adds an plain dimension to the concept of group work, as functioning for students on some(prenominal) levels, not simply on a praxis/practice level.Of course, the discussion of group work leads us neatly into the concept of peer feedback, which is affiliated to the theories on group activities and just as contentious, it seems. Rollinson (2005) show s how although peer feedback has been supported in ESL classrooms, teachers and students are less than convinced of its efficacy and usefulness.Rollinson (2005) argues that proper training and procedures for peer feedback in ESOL classrooms is the key to making such feedback effective. Hu (2005) seems to echo this, that peer feedback can enhance learning, but does acknowledge that these activities need monitoring and that peer canvas situations can be problematic. Feedback and review of English language proficiency can be ceremoniousised into learning activities in the classroom context. Al-Hazmi and Scholfield (2007) describe an bodily exploit research study which was aimed at improving English language composition proficiency in Saudi Arabian university students. This study involved a regime of enforced draft adjustment, using a checklist in which two groups were involved, one trained in peer revision, the other doing their own revision (Al-Hazmi and Scholfield, 2007 p 237). These authors found that there were clear draft improvements in look, particularly in mechanics, despite only modest amounts of meaning-changing and multisentential revisions being recorded Al-Hazmi and Scholfield, 2007 p 237). The most significant finding from this study demonstrated that the students enjoyed and acted positively to peer review (Al-Hazmi and Scholfield, 2007). This may simply underline the fact that language learning is as much a social as an individual process (Dagenais et al, 2008 Roberts and Baynham, 2006 Schellekens, 2007)Formal discipline feedback is also an essential component of developing fluency, although again, the form that this takes can affect its value. Hyland and Hyland (2006), for example, agree that feedback is vital in terms of load-bearing(a) learning and consolidating that learning, and demonstrate that it is used in process-based classrooms and in genre-orientated learning environments. It may seem obvious to some that tutor feedback is i mportant, but teachers and learners should be aware that feedback has different means, as well as different forms, and while it can be difficult for some students to assimilate feedback and correction, it is through signposting mistakes as well as successes that students can learn how much they have learned.Feedback itself has expanded to grasp not only scripted comments from the teacher, but language workshops, conferences and even electronic feedback (Hyland and Hyland, 2006). Lyster and Mori (2006) examined the effects of explicit correction, recasts, and prompts on learner uptake and repair, and found that instructional activities and interactional feedback that act as a counterbalance to a classrooms preponderating communicative orientation are likely to prove more effective than instructional activities and interactional feedback that are congruent with its predominant communicative orientation (p 269). This suggests that feedback must be specific to the task and to the con text, and also that there is a need for a deeper understanding of the pedagogical dimensions of formal tutor feedback, and the purpose that this feedback serves. This also shows that the emergence of the communicative classroom is not necessarily the utmost evolution of the ESOL context (Campbell and Duncan, 2007).However, there are those who have argued strongly against written feedback, and the trends in ESOL teaching in recent years has been to avoid this (Bitchener, 2008). However, research by Bitchener (2008) shows that in some cases, written feedback enhances learningThe study found that the accuracy of students who received written corrective feedback in the immediate post-test outperformed those in the control group and that this level of performance was retained 2 months later.Bitchener 2008 p 102.This would seem to suggest that there is value in providing written tutor feedback. Lochtman (2002) also shows the value of oral or verbal feedback, but underlines the need to gi ve different kinds of feedback depending on the language learning context, the task, and the learner, suggesting that while this feedback is beneficial, it is only so if it meets the needs of the individual learner.One of the issues with fluency is also related to currency (Taylor, 2006), and it could be that the provision of both types of feedback is central to understanding the live use of various idiomatic forms as well as of soak up and vernacular. While many ESOL teaching contexts shy away from teaching frequent spoken forms and focus on formal, correct English, feedback from a tutor, for example, can help to draw comparisons between the two forms and allow students to develop awareness of when it is capture to use the different types of English expression (Taylor, 2006 Wallace, 2006). This ability to speak fluently is much more complex than simply learning linguistic form, it is about attaining a degree of comfort and ease with using the language, and using it fittingly and naturally. All of these approaches to supporting language learning could be verbalise to be fostering this development, but only if they are properly planned, and managed, and it seems that quality teaching and facilitation is still required.ConclusionThis essay demonstrates that there is a range of literature to support the development of language fluency in ESOL classrooms through group work and through interactive processes of learning, and through the provision of tutor feedback and peer feedback. There are issues and challenges with ESOL learning in relation to developing verbal skills, because verbal language requires real-time interaction and the ability to respond to different cues and situations. It would seem from the literature cited above that the use of group work in ESOL learning needs to be planned carefully and designed to ensure that learning is not impeded by individual differences or by the negative aspects of group work, including frustration between learner s with different levels of competency, and difficulties in group work which is assessed formally.Collaborative learning may be a strength in developing fluency, and this could be incorporated with peer feedback, but it would seem that this is only truly effective if the students are trained and supported in giving feedback to ensure it is fair and an constructive, and given in the appropriate spirit. Similarly, it would seem that feedback may assist in developing fluency, but the literature cited does not provide strong or conclusive evidence that formal feedback is good for this, despite its value in developing written and verbal language skills. 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