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UNIT 2: VARIABLES TO TAKE INTO ACCOUN IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE…
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INDIVIDUAL WORK
when students have to work on their own and at their own
pace in activities such as reading, writing, or studying vocabulary. It helps
students to internalize what they have learnt.
LOCKSTEP
refers to the traditional teaching. The teacher controls and asses the
class and all the students are working on the same activity. On one hand, the
students get a good model from the teacher, but on the other, they get little
chance to practice and it is not used in real situations. Although they are
concentrated, the development of the activity will be slow for the good
students and fast for the weak ones.
PAIR WORK
is useful in speaking activities such as mini role‐plays or
information gaps. This type of grouping increases the amount of practice‐
promoting cooperation, participation, autonomy, responsibility and motivation,
and thus, developing the socialization process of the students and favoring a
good atmosphere in the classroom.
The teacher´s role here is fundamental as they have to explain to students what
to do, preventing the use of the mother tongue. They have got an active role as
they must prevent breakdowns in communication when the students are
interacting in English. This type of grouping is commonly used in the English
class and we have made a distinction between pair and group work, although
pair work can also be included within group work.
GROUP WORK
lets students use the language to communicate with each other,
developing the socialization process and increasing their talk‐time. A good idea
when using group work is designating a leader for each group so that he can act
as a link between the students and the teacher, who is coordinating the activity
rather than dominating the group. This grouping is useful to carry
communicative out activities and the teacher should select these activities
consciously and carefully, monitoring student performance and providing
feedback, when necessary. Cooperative learning activities can also be used for
discussing a topic, debates, projects or performances.
Diversity in group composition is also important regarding the
selection of members
for each group,
because depending on the aim of the task we will select one student
or another. For example if we want our students to make a composition, we should
group them taking into account that in each group there should be at least one student
who is good at writing compositions. So, we will group students
ACCORDING TO
ABILITY
into:
Homogeneous groups
when mixing students with similar ability level or
Heterogeneous groups
in which high, middle and low ability level students are
mixed together.