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Students Participation in Group Work Activities

M.Ed. TESOL – Program

Kabul Education University

Course: Educational Enquiry

By: Qeyamuddin

June 24, 2013

Advisors: Tara Beth and Zaroghona Achekzai

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1. Introduction

The technique of teaching students in groups in ESL classes is a way which leads to more

communication and allows the students to do a range of task that is impossible to do

individually. Although group work is a useful technique of teaching for students, it has also

many problems. The topic that I would like to study is the students’ participation in the groups

in Afghan context. According to my experience in the four years of teaching English at Kunduz

University, I have seen few groups that have worked well and I have experienced many groups

in which the students have not participated appropriately. Thus the outcome of that lesson has

not been satisfactory both for the teachers and students. The students while being in groups

have thought it a convenient place of telling personal stories and talks. I would like to study this

problem and find a way to help students participate in the group work activities and have good

communicative classes using communicative approaches.

2. Literature Review

Although group work teaching is a communicative technique and helps students

tremendously in learning the language in ESL classes, still there are some difficulties to practice

it appropriately. According to Jeremy Harmer (2007) in groups students can do varieties of

activities. For example, they can work together and prepare a story. As well as they can take

roles to perform a situation in their groups. Furthermore, the writer says that the students will

participate more in small groups than large groups. Moreover, he emphasizes that every

student will be motivated to communicate in small groups. However, when students work in

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groups, he believes that everybody talking in the class will distract both the students and the

teacher and for some teachers it would be difficult to monitor the class. As well as he states

that students do usually like to sit with their friends in the group work activities because they

like their teachers to pay special attention to them. Furthermore, Harmer (2007) says that it

happens that usually the active students dominate the group because the weak students do not

take part. Sometimes, when students sit in groups the teachers lose control. These factors all

lead some students not to participate in in the groups properly.

According to Harmer (2007) one way to solve the problems mentioned above is to know

different ways of making groups. The first thing the writer believes is we should put students

who are happy with each other to sit in one group rather those who don’t want to sit with each

other. Here we can experience which group of students would like to work with each other and

use this experience later. This is a very good way of making groups, but this may still have a

problem. For example, students will go to groups that there are clever and popular students.

Then, the unpopular students will be left alone.

According to Harmer (2007) there is another way of making groups which is so reliable. This

way is through socio-gram. In this method the teacher asks students to write the names of

students they want to study with in groups and those they don’t want to study with. Then,

students write their preferred and un-prefer classmates name and give to their teacher. In this

method of making groups the teacher know all his students choice about group works and then

he can make very active and working groups. According to the writer, socio-groups also have

some problems. The first problem is that it takes much time to organize groups in this way and

cannot help the isolated students.

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Next Harmer (2007) says we should not consider students like and dislike we should try

students should accept each other. Still the writer emphasizes that it is a good technique to

improve group works not working well. I hope these ways of making groups can help the

teachers and students to solve their problems in the ESL classes.

Although according to Harmer (2007) the suggestions mentioned above are very good

solutions for the problems I faced with group work activities, but still there are many barriers.

The first barrier is that teachers taught in this class before me did not use effective strategies of

making group work activities, or teachers teaching right now in this class using group work

techniques are not using effective ways of making group work activities. For example, either

they are randomly choosing groups or according to their own wish. Therefore, I think this leads

to lack of students’ interest to participate in the group work activities. to remove this barrier I

think it is necessary to experience the ways of making work activities that Harmer (2007) has

suggested whether these techniques of making group work activities increases students

participation in the groups or not. The other barrier is that many teachers who have taught

them in traditional method of language teaching now they are new to ways of making group

work activities. This reason could also cause for students no to actively participate in the group

work activities.

Therefore, I decided to conduct this research to find out the solution to this problem. I mean I

want to find out how to have effective group work activities in large ESL classes in which all the

students participate.

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3. Rationale and Research Question

It is a long time the experts of English language teaching (ELT) are working to substitute the

traditional method of teaching English with modern methods in Afghanistan. Based on my

experience as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher I have experienced that

communicative language teaching approaches work better and have got good result in teaching

English. My purpose to do this research is to remove some problems still English teacher face in

Afghanistan, enhance and empower communicative language teaching methods in Afghan

context. As well as, right now in Afghanistan English teachers are using good methods of

teaching but still they face problems to apply them effectively. As an example, according to my

experience I have faced the lack of students’ participation in group work activities in large ESL

classes.

As well as, Harmer (2007) emphasizes, sometimes students do not want to be in a group to

which they are assigned to because they like to be with other students. The author also says

that it happens that usually the active students dominate the group because the weak students

do not take part. Sometimes when students sit in groups the teachers lose control. All these

factors causes that some students do not want to participate in the group work activities.

Therefore, I decided to do my research about: How can I make sure that all individuals

participate in group work activities in a large ESL classes.

4. Methods

4.1. Research Design:

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The research design I will use to conduct this research is Action Research design. I use this

method to see what happens in the class when students sit and study in different group in

different ways.

4.2. Participants:

To conduct this research my participants would be thirty five junior students of English

department at Kunduz University. I use convenience sampling in doing my research. Since I am

doing an action research, I will choose all my thirty five junior students that I teach them in one

class as my participants. In my class there are both male and female students.

4.3. Data and Resource Instruments:

To conduct my research I will use three questionnaires and observation table.

First, I will use a preliminary questionnaire. This questionnaire will have questions about

leaners’ preferences regarding group work activities. I use this questionnaire at the beginning of

my research to find out; how much students like to work with their classmates or participate in

the group work activities.

Then, based on this data I will start my first round of teaching the class for two months.

While teaching I will observe the students working in groups and use observation table to

collect the data. In this observation I record students’ interaction, behavior and attitude while

they are doing in the groups.

In the middle of the semester I will use my second questionnaire. I use this questionnaire to

check whether students’ preferences and participation have increased in the group work

activities or not.

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Again I will my second round of teaching and use observation table. I use observation table

for the same purpose as I do in the first round.

At the end of the semester I will use my third questionnaire. Similar to the first and second

questionnaires, I want to check how students’ ideas have changed preferring group work

activities and participation in the group work activities rather than in the beginning of the

research.

4.4. Procedures:

This research will take four months to be conducted. In the beginning to the research I will

give the students the preliminary questionnaire about students’ preferences to group work

activities. Then, I will teach students for two months using communicative language teaching

(CLT) and observe them during this time how do they participate in the group work activities. In

this two month of teaching I experience the way of making groups as putting students who are

happy to sit with each other in one group. As well as, I use my observation table to record

students’ interaction and participation in the group work activities. At the end of the first two

months, and fifteen minutes at the end of a class I will give students the second questionnaire. I

give this questionnaire to see how students react to group work activities rather than the

beginning of the semester.

In the second two months of the research again I teach my students. In this round I use

another way of making groups the socio-gram suggested by Harmer (2007) to see how it works

and increase students’ participation in the group work activities. During this period besides

teaching again I observe my student and fill in an observation table about students’ reaction

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and interaction in the groups. Finally, at the end of the second two months, I mean at the end

of the four months of the research I will give students the third questionnaire about group work

activities to check how students’ ideas and preferences have changed regarding group work

activities rather than at the beginning of the research.

4.5. Analysis

The outcome of this research is both quantitative and qualitative. This is because I have

both qualitative data and quantitative data in this research. My questionnaires will provide

quantitative data and the observations qualitative data. Therefore, I will analyze my data during

doing my research and will have five stages.

First, I will read the questionnaires I gave to students at the beginning of the research about

leaner’s preferences regarding group work activities. When I read these questionnaires, I want

to see how many percent students prefer to work in groups with their classmates.

Then, I read the notes from the observation table I took during the first two months of my

teaching in the class. In this part, I try to see whether the techniques I used to make group work

activities in CLT have help the student to increase their participation in the group work activities

or not. Then I write the result of my two months teaching based on my first questionnaire data

that whether my teaching using different techniques of group work activities as suggested by

Harmer (2007) could improve my students’ participation in group work activities or not. If it has

improved how it has improved.

Next, in the third stage I will analyze the second questionnaire I gave for students. In this

stage of my research I would like to find out whether the students preferences about group

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work activities have increased rather than at the beginning of the research or not. I mean I

want to find out how many percent the students’ ideas and reactions have changed about

participation in group work activities than at the beginning of the research. Then, based on the

information taken from the second questionnaire I will start the second period of teaching.

Later, in the fourth stage I will read the observation table notes from my second round of

teaching using new technique of making groups such as socio-gram. Again in this stage I would

like to find out whether the new technique of making groups have improved students

participation in group work activities or not. If the students’ group work participation had

improved, in this section I will write which techniques of making groups suggested by Harmer

have been effective to increase students’ participation in group work activities. And if students’

participation in group work activities had not improved I will write why they have not improved.

In the fifth and last stage, I will read the third groups of questionnaires that I gave for the

students about their preferences and reactions regarding group work activities. Here I want to

find out how many percent the students’ preferences towards the group work activities have

increased or what their reaction at the end of the research is. Have the teaching and through

different techniques of making group work activities been useful for them and affected on their

preferences or not.

Finally, after analyzing every step I will write my report step by step. For example, I will take

the result of every stage; compare the result of every questionnaire with the questionnaires

and the result of teaching with teaching. In writing my report first I discuss about the

percentages of students’ likes and dislikes about their participation in the group work activities

and it’s improvement in every stage of my research due to the teachings. I choose some topics

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or group work techniques which have been effective to improve students’ participation in the

group work activities and write about them.

5. Discussion

Since students’ participation in the group work activities is an important topic, it needs more

effort to overcome this problem. There would be two possible outcomes in my research.

First, practicing the techniques of making groups suggested by Harmer (2007) may increase

students’ participation in the group work activities. I am optimist that if I try the techniques of

making group work activities (putting students who are happy to sit with each other in one

group, using socio-gram in making groups students participation in group work activities will

increase in large ESL classes. I think one outcome could be: putting students who are happy to

sit with each other in one group and using socio-grams in making groups will increase students’

participation in group work activities. If this possible outcome comes true, then we can easily

make group work activities and take a very good result and learning will take place. Since I am

doing this research to improve the quality of teaching in my classes, after getting the implied I

will change the way I was organizing group work activities in the past and apply these new

techniques of group work activities which are helpful to increase students’ participation in the

group work activities. As well as, because the students’ participation in group work activities

are interconnected with the way other teachers do group work activities in this class, I will

suggest the other teachers to apply these techniques of making group work activities for

improvement of their classes.

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The second possible outcome could be students’ participation will not increase in group

work activities using the suggested techniques by Harmer (2007). I mean still students will not

participate even by teaching them through those useful techniques of group work activities.

The reason for this outcome would be that students’ participation in the group work activities

could not only be increase in one semester by trying some specific methods. Since I want to

study my junior students, it means that they have already studied for two more years with

other teachers. The issue of students’ participation in the group work activities is

interconnected in the way other teachers have taught this class in the last two years. I mean if

other teachers have not conducted group work activities and have not encouraged students to

participate in the group studies, it would be a little difficult to increase students’ participation in

the group work activities in four months.

Then, other teachers should have practiced group work activities in the freshman and

sophomore classes before. Now, if we get this outcome, I should try to encourage other ESL

teachers teaching in this class. Or other teachers of English department should try to use group

work activities from the very beginning in the freshman year to help increase student’s

participation in the group work activities. Otherwise it might be difficult to be able to increase

students’ participation in the group work activities in one semester.

6. Conclusion

This is the fourth year that I am teaching English in Large ESL classes. Although I am using

communicative language teaching approaches, but still I face with some problems that causes

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me not to achieve my aims in the classroom. The reason is that students’ participation in the

group work activities is weak. They do not like much to work with their classmates in one

group. For this reason I decided to conduct a research on this topic. The purpose of this

research is to find a way to help increase students’ participation in the group work activities in

the large ESL classrooms.

There are many reasons that students do not participate in the group work activities

effectively. According to Harmer (2007) sometimes students want to be with their friends in the

groups not with anyone their teacher assigns them, or sometimes the clever students dominate

the groups. As well as, the writer adds that it is sometimes difficult for the teacher to control

students in group. These are some of the reasons that may cause students not to participate in

the group work activities well. According to my experience, I have seen students talking about

their daily affairs. Therefore, I thought to conduct an action research and find a solution to my

problem, students dislike to group work activities, and later share the outcome with other ESL

teachers in my country.

There are many techniques that Harmer (2007) suggests in his book to solve this problem.

He says one of the ways that can help teachers to encourage students’ participation is to know

different ways of making groups. There are three ways he suggests to make good groups that

students will then participate. The first technique is considering students preferences to their

group mates. I mean we should let students sit with those students that they like to study with

them. The second way is using socio-grams in which the teacher asks students to write the

names of students they like to study with and the names of those they do not like. These are

some techniques that could be useful, but after doing the research we will understand.

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By the end of this research I am sure that I can come up with a solution to this problem. The

result that I can imply from my research is using good techniques in the classroom in making

groups will help improve students’ participation in the group work activities. For example, if we

consider students’ likes in making groups. This will be one of the ways students will want to

take part in the groups actively.

In conducting this research I am using observation system and questionnaires. Therefore, I

think there could be instrumentation threat. As far as in the two stages of teaching in the

classroom I am both teaching and observing my students, I think I might lose some data

because of doing two things at the same time. To overcome this problem I think using an audio

recorder will help me partially. This is because I am not only noting students’ interaction, but

also I note students’ behavior and attitude while they are working in the groups. I hope I can do

a research without any threat and get a good outcome to solve my problem.

References:

Harmer, J. (2007) The Practice of English Language Teaching. London: Pearson Longman

Nunan, D. & Baily K. M. (2009). Exploring Second Language Classroom Research. United States:

HEINLE CENGAGE Learning.