University of Ljubljana

Faculty of Arts
Department of English

Research Paper in The Fundamentals of ELT Methodology

Class management: Groupwork

Zala Erklavec
(track of study: English and Slovak language)

Mentor: red. prof. dr. Janez Skela

Ljubljana, July 2022

Contents

1. Introduction.........................................................................................................................2
2. Interaction in language classroom.......................................................................................3
2.1. Types of interaction......................................................................................................3
2.2. Communicative method...............................................................................................4
2.3. Negotiation of meaning................................................................................................5
3. Groupwork...........................................................................................................................6
3.1. Advantages...................................................................................................................6
3.2 Disadvantages...............................................................................................................7
3.3. Types of groups............................................................................................................8
3.4. Implementing groupwork in the classroom..................................................................9
4. Groupwork in distance learning........................................................................................14
5. Bibliography......................................................................................................................16

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 1. Introduction

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is an approach to foreign language teaching that

has in the last decades become well-established worldwide, perhaps most thoroughly in the
case of English, the world’s current lingua franca. It is aimed at developing the learner’s
competence to communicate in the target language, with an enhanced focus on real-life
situations. In CLT, the teacher therefore acquires a new role as a designer of simulations of
these real-life situations in the classroom. This can be achieved in a number of ways, one of
the most obvious and popular of them being the groupwork, which can serve as a great tool to
make the students take up the social roles and communicate in the same way as they would in
a real-life situation. It also provides the teacher with the opportunity to change the dynamics
in the classroom and offer a relief from plain frontal teaching. In this paper I will present the
advantages and disadvantages of groupwork, with results of several studies conducted in the
recent years. I will also define the types of groups and groupwork with the accordance to the
source literature, and discuss the teacher’s role in the preparation and conducting of
groupwork in their classroom. Lastly, I will touch upon the recent COVID-19 pandemic and
distance teaching and compare what options do different distance teaching tools offer to
teachers when it comes to organising the groupwork.

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 2. Interaction in language classroom

2.1. Types of interaction

In a traditional language classroom, particularly on a beginner-to-intermediate level, a typical

interaction pattern is initiated by the teacher by asking the students questions or using some
similar tools to involve them into the topic of the lesson. After the student responses, the
teacher provides evaluation or correction of the student’s utterance as immediate feedback.
For example:
Teacher: “How did you spend your holidays?”
Student: “I went to the sea.”
Teacher: “You went to the seaside, good.”

Such an interaction is commonly referred to as the IRF (initiation-response-feedback)

exchange and it enables the teacher to directly test individual students to confirm if they
understand the topic or the vocabulary and whether they can produce a sufficient response, as
well as provides the student with an immediate confirmation of the (in)correctness of what
they had said (Hadley, 2010; Kasim, 2016). A study in Vietnam showed that the IRF type of
interaction can take even up to 65% of the lesson time in a low-proficiency language
classroom (Thi & Thuy, 2021).

Of course, the IRF structure is not the only form of communication that the teacher follows
when interacting and communicating with the students in the classroom. They greet, ask,
direct, and lead the class. To be effective and save time publicly communicate, the teacher
addresses the class as a whole, or they sometimes nominate and call one specific student, to
stimulate individual language production or as a form of evaluation. The teacher can also set
the classroom activity to make the student interact with each other, for example in pairs or
groups.
A variety of interactional patterns in language classroom is generally desirable and may
positively affect the language learning process as well as the development of language
proficiency. These patterns have been categorised and named by several different authors,
here I present one such categorisation that proposes five types of classroom interaction:
teacher ↔ whole class, teacher ↔ individual student, teacher ↔ a group of students, student

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↔ student, student ↔ a group of students (Kasim, 2016; Malamah-Thomas, 1987; Sundari et
al., 2017).

Despite the versatility of interaction, the teacher still plays the most prominent role in the
classroom, by managing the dynamics of the classroom, delegating the tasks, deciding on who
talks, when and how much, and themselves taking the role of a conversation partner with the
student(s). The teacher’s interaction skills could therefore be considered of vital importance
for the success in a language classroom, even in those instances when they are at first glance
not a part of the interaction, as is the case with groupwork (Sundari et al., 2017).

2.2. Communicative method

The communicative method in language teaching, often referred to as Communicative

Language Teaching (CLT) or Communicative Approach (CA) is method of language teaching
that is rooted in the post-war linguistic theories of linguistic competence, and later
communicative competence, and has since the 1970s gradually become the predominant
language teaching approach in Europe. The method, which propagates the development of
communicative competence of the students through simulation of real-life situations in the
classroom, is supposed to be more beneficial at providing language learners with the ability to
use the target language in natural conversations in the real world, and more similar to the
subconscious language acquisition of one’s mother tongue in the early childhood. (Alfares,
2017; Hymes, 1972; Jonz & Saville-Troike, 1984; Sadoughvanini & Shamsudin, 2013). To
summarise this approach in short: “Interaction is both the method and the goal of ESL
education.” (The Communicative Language Approach in ESL Education, 2021)

The communicative method represents a step away from the more traditional language
teaching approaches, such as the direct method, the audio-lingual method, and the even older
grammar–translation method which predominantly emphasised the development of linguistic
and grammatical competence in learners (Jonz & Saville-Troike, 1984; Sadoughvanini &
Shamsudin, 2013). Some researchers believe that the communicative method developed due
to the dissatisfaction with these methods and their inability to provide the learners with the
skills they would require in order to handle a real-life communicative situation, such giving or
asking for directions, order food in a restaurant, schedule an appointment or lead a

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conversation about everyday issues. An additional factor for the popularity of the method that
can offer learners such skills is the increasing role of English as one of the international
languages (if not the most prominent one), with the number of English-as-second-language
speakers grossly exceeding the number of native speakers (Brumfit, 1986; Eberhard et al.,
2022).

2.3. Negotiation of meaning

Despite the importance of the role of the teacher in the classroom, results of some research
suggest that it is not the teacher ↔ student interaction which is the most effective in acquiring
the communication skills of students, but rather the student ↔ student type of interaction,
which can in the classroom be achieved most easily with pairwork or groupwork (Ellis, 1994).
By listening to other students attempting to communicate, either correctly or incorrectly,
students gradually acquire the ability to produce senseful utterances in the target language,
which is ultimately, as mentioned above, the basic goal of the communicative method.

When communicating with each other, the learners must go through a process of determining
their level of understanding of each other, and if needed, additionally ask, clarify, or
paraphrase their utterance in order to overcome any comprehension problems. This is
generally referred to as the negotiation of meaning. Engaging students in such negotiation
activities can increase their awareness of the comprehensibility of their output and therefore
improve their communicative language abilities overall, be it form or meaning (Alfares, 2017;
Ellis, 1994; Oliver, 1998).

Students that are pushed to produce the language overcome the initial struggle by reflecting
on their abilities and the gap between what they want to say and what they really say. They
move on from focusing solely on the meaning and the form comes into consciousness as well.
This makes them being able to not only receive the input, which would otherwise be typical
for the traditional form of frontal teaching, but also pushes them to process this input and
actively reproduce it or respond to it by themselves (Swain, 1985). Some experiments also
indicate that interactive methods that include the negotiation of meaning improve the
students’ retention and recall of information and vocabulary (Rees, 1998).

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It is also worth mentioning that the need to negotiate the meaning in an everyday situation
might apply to people without, or with a very limited, common language code. The fact that a
teacher might teach a low-proficiency group should for them not be a deterrent, but rather an
incentive to engage their learners in activities where the negotiation of meaning is necessary,
in order to prepare them for managing such situation in real life (Jonz & Saville-Troike,
1984). A similar point can be made for the case of small children who are, just like adults,
capable of effective negotiation of meaning, despite them choosing somewhat different means
and techniques to achieve the goal (Oliver, 1998).

3. Groupwork

3.1. Advantages

Groupwork is a type of classroom setting in which students are divided into smaller units and
given instructions to perform a specific task. Groupwork could be considered an effective
method of teaching foreign languages for several reasons, mainly because this setting gives
the student the opportunity to interact with each other freely. Benefits of the groupwork could
generally be divided into those related to cognitive aspects of their language learning process,
and those that are related to emotional aspects and the students’ motivation to learn (Alfares,
2017). Here I list the most noteworthy advantages of groupwork in a language classroom:
- It maximises the time that students can speak the and minimises the time that students
spend listening to other students interacting with the teacher. By sharing reading and
listening activities, writing cooperatively, or discussing, students are involved in the
negotiation of meaning activities which improve their general communication
competences.
- Groups comprise of several individuals who each have different experiences,
knowledge and skills. Due to this variety of skillsets, a group is much more likely to
successfully complete a task than an individual. This also present a great learning
opportunity for the members of the groups who can directly learn from observing
others tackling the task. This surpasses the basic goal of language acquisition and has,
especially in lower education, great formative value.

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 - It gives more autonomy to learners who can choose the extent to which they would
like to participate based on their abilities and the social roles they would like to take
on within the group. This makes many learners much more comfortable than
prescribed workload.
- It is an opportunity for the student to self-reflect and analyse and compare their
decision-making process and their role a group environment.
- Unlike frontal teaching, it is more appropriate for students that are kinaesthetic
learners, especially if the result of the groupwork is a product. Additionally,
groupwork discussions are generally more memorable than frontal teaching for all
types of learners.
- Other group members can help a student to clarify or explain certain issues for which
they might otherwise be afraid to seek help with the teacher. This is particularly
important in those cultures where the relationship between the teacher and the students
is rather formal and reserved and where the communication with the teacher,
especially in front of the entire class, might be stressful for the student.
- If the relationship between the group members is amicable, groupwork provides a
friendly and supportive environment where learning is easier for the students and the
motivation to learn greater.
- Students which are normally outcast from the class acquire an opportunity to socialise
and contribute in a small group environment. Their peers might become more open-
minded or accepting towards them through socialising with them in the group.
- Solving a problem or fulfilling a task creates a logical basis for interaction, asking
questions and providing the answers, negotiating, explaining. If students feel that there
is a real, natural purpose for their input, they will more likely cooperate and use the
language than in an artificial type of a situation which can otherwise be commonly
met in language classrooms.
- Being able to work in a group is a highly desirable skill in most working environments
and possessing good group cooperation skills might ensure future employment to the
students.
(Alfares, 2017; Brown, 2001; Burke, 2011; Harmer, 2007; Oliver, 1998)

3.2 Disadvantages

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Groupwork might also present certain disadvantages which cannot be neglected and must be
dealt with by a teacher conducting groupwork in their classroom:
- Some students feel strong repulsion towards working in a group, usually due to past
bad experience. Such attitude towards working in a group is referred to as grouphate.
Students with grouphate might intentionally stay passive in a group or even negatively
affect other group members which leads to disrupted group dynamics and more
students feeling negatively about groupwork.
- The division of workload is likely to be unequal among the students since the students
which are more eager or capable will be quickly recognised and assigned more
workload by those who wish to avoid having to contribute their share of work as much
as possible. This also causes problems for the teacher when it comes to grading the
groupwork.
- In order to avoid potential conflicts, students with alternative ideas or solutions might
rather stay quiet to conform to the majority opinion of the group, or the opinion of the
leader of the group, which can lead both to student dissatisfaction with the groupwork
and reduced quality of the final product.
- Some tasks may take much longer to be completed in group than alone, which can
make some student feel like groupwork is a waste of time.
- In mixed-ability groups, the difficulty level of the task is usually adapted to low-
ability students in order for them to be able to keep up. This may make high-ability
students feel like they are themselves not progressing or learning anything new. If the
difficulty level is set higher, a lot of time has to be spent on additional clarification
and helping the low-ability students.
- Particularly in lower grades, friendships and personal relationships among the students
can hinder the group formation process, since the students often protest not being put
in the same group as another student they wished to be with, which can result in
stubborn refusal of cooperation in the groupwork.
- Groupwork can be noisy and certain loss of control is almost inevitable for the
teacher. It can lead to a situation where an entire group, or several of them completely
refuse to cooperate and perceive the time assigned for groupwork as free time.
- Class cohesion may be hindered and unwanted sense of fragmentation and
competition among the students may appear.
(Alfares, 2017; Brown, 2001; Burke, 2011; Ellis, 1994; Harmer, 2007; Keyton & Harmon,
1996)

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 3.3. Types of groups

In the classroom environment, we can distinguish three group types based on their academic
aim. Learning cycle groups are groups where students with similar learning abilities or
interests are brough together to study, practice, get additional help if needed, or given
additional exercises if they have successfully completed all the tasks given to the entire class
by the teacher. Their aim is not to produce something new as a group, but merely to practice
or revise the lesson materials in a small group environment with the potential help or
discussing with their peers. The same applies to peer tutoring groups, with the notable
difference of peer tutoring groups being designed to consist of students with different ability
levels. The goal in this case is for the high-ability students to help or lecture the low-ability
students. Cooperative groups are likely most common and their aim is to accomplish an
assigned goal or task, either short- or long-term (Ward, 1987).

3.4. Implementing groupwork in the classroom

3.4.1. Preparation

The teacher must first decide whether or not to make groupwork a part of their syllabus. If
one acknowledges the benefits of the communicative method in language teaching, it is
difficult to find arguments for not using groupwork in a language classroom. Teachers that
shy away from groupwork most often list loss of control, students using their native language
and error reinforcement as primary reasons. These issues can largely be overcome with proper
preparation, clearly assigned tasks and the teacher themselves adapting their expectations
towards the students (Brown, 2001).

The content of groupwork must be reasonably planned in advance as well. Inconclusive and
open-ended groupwork might lead to students not seeing the purpose of the activity. This is
why it might be beneficial that the time spent in group is used for making a finished product
that can then even be presented to the rest of the class and can evoke a sense of achievement
or pride in the students (Hadfield, 1992; Sowell, 2017). If groupwork is used by the teacher
on a regular basis, they should make sure that these products are not consistently oriented

9
only towards reading and writing, but should include other, linguistically less obvious aspects.
These could for example be: a short play, a drawing or a poster, a video, a game. This
prevents only one profile of students from constantly dominating group activities, and
provides students of various learning types and linguistically less proficient students with the
opportunity to also actively participate in the groupwork (Ward, 1987).

In classes which are less experienced in groupwork or are more reluctant to participate in it,
the teacher might need to use some persuasive techniques to present and defend the usage of
groupwork. The teacher should stress the importance of practicing the language, showcase the
usefulness of the target language in their own lives, ensure that small groups provide a
comfortable and secure environment for practice and experimentation. Short group games can
demonstrate to the students that groupwork can be fun as well (Brown, 2001). If the
reluctancy persists, a short survey can be made among the students on why they like or dislike
working individually, in pairs, or in groups, and after reviewing the answers, an attempt can
be made to address their concerns directly, or negotiate how future activities are to be
conducted (Harmer, 2007).

It is beneficial for the students to provide them with both written instructions and readily
available materials that they can use for their groupwork, unless one of the aims of the
groupwork is for the students to practice their skills at acquiring, sorting, and critically
evaluating their resources (Ward, 1987). In the information age that the 21st century brought
along, this set of skills is likely to be very useful for the future generations of learners.

Among the materials that the teacher should prepare for a groupwork lesson, there should also
be task-related extensions and activities for those individuals or students who finish first and
are left with nothing to do while waiting for others to finish (Harmer, 2007).

3.4.2. Instructions

The instructions that the teacher gives to the students should be clear and concise. They
should contain the objective of the task and how it relates to the course content, the details on
how to complete the task and/or how the final product is supposed to look like, how much

10
time do the students have and what tools are at their disposal (Brown, 2001; Burke, 2011;
Sowell, 2017).

After being done with giving the instructions, the teacher should give the students the
opportunity to ask additional questions and make sure that everyone understands the activity.
For short activities, it is useful for a group of volunteers to come up and demonstrate a part of
the activity for the entire class (Sowell, 2017). For more complex, long-term, and open-ended
activities, it is beneficial to provide students with written instructions where all the objectives
and assessment criteria are clearly stated (Brown, 2001; Ward, 1987).

Behaviour in the classroom for the duration of the group activity should also be defined, in
some cases complete silence is required or movement is restricted. To make the monitoring
and help by the teacher during groupwork more effective, a rule can be implemented that the
interruption of the teacher ↔ group interaction by students of other groups is not allowed
(Ward, 1987).

Finally, if necessary, the teacher provides the students with useful expressions (gambits).
They are especially useful for low-proficiency groups and serve as a technique to prevent
students from using their mother tongue. For example: “It’s my turn.” “Please, repeat.” “Can
you say that slower?” “I’m done.” They are clarified before the beginning of the task and
perhaps written down on the board so that the students can easily see them and use them
(Ramírez Salas, 2011).

3.4.3. Grouping

There are many ways in which a teacher can split students into groups. One of the obvious
options is to let students do that by themselves. By taking the students’ preferences into
account, the teacher might succeed in making groupwork more attractive in the eyes of
students, which is especially important in a class where there had been dissatisfaction with
groupwork in the past (Alfares, 2017). However, letting students split themselves into groups
based on who they like is likely to be very chaotic and it leaves less popular students standing
alone. It can also result in students socialising instead of devoting their time to work (Burke,
2011; Harmer, 2007). Making a sociogram and distributing students into groups based on it

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will leave the teacher with the same issue of what to do with less popular students. However,
sociogram might help in a situation where groupwork is very ineffective due to interpersonal
relationships and sensible regrouping is necessary (Harmer, 2007).

Grouping students completely by chance through assigning letters, numbers, or drawing their
names from a bag, is relatively unproblematic and has the value of showcasing to the students
that they should be able to cooperate with anyone (Harmer, 2007). However, it can produce
some undesirable combinations of students. Many authors stress the importance of versatility
within the group which ensures a large spectrum of opinions, skills, competences and views
on the topic and consequently better results (Brown, 2001; Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003;
Parnrod & Darasawang, 2018; Ward, 1987). If the teacher is well familiar with their class,
they can shape the groups so that the students can complement each other when working on a
task.

Grouping students based on their academic abilities in primary and secondary education is
considered problematic and should be done with caution and only for a specific and
transparent purposes, for example if a number of students in the class is preparing for a
special test or a competition. Particularly long-term ability groups have an influence on
personal relationships between the students and may cause irreparable damage to their
friendships and their perception of each other and themselves (Ward, 1987).

There seems to be a general consensus among the researchers that the most effective
cooperative groups consist of four to six students. Such a group is small enough for all of the
members, even the shyest ones, to interact and be heard, but not so small that they would be
completely reliant on each other (Alfares, 2017; Brown, 2001; Burke, 2011; Ward, 1987). It
could be argued that an ideal number of students in a group is five, since the odd number
ensures that if issues arise, they can resolve them by voting (Harmer, 2007). Depending on the
activity the size of group can also change; groups can merge or split which can in some cases
bring about a welcome change in dynamics.

3.4.4. Sitting arrangement

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Research shows that physical arrangement of classroom to provide separate work areas for
groups increases students' attention to group tasks (Ward, 1987). These are typically some
sort of islands or clusters where students sit around a common desk or on the ground and can
easily discuss with each other, separately from other groups. Some teachers ask the students
to rearrange the classroom for groupwork, some do it before the beginning of the class so that
the position of the furniture already indicates to the students groupwork will be a part of the
lesson that day. In some classes where groupwork is very often conducted, the teacher might
opt for having the classroom permanently set in such a modular position to not have to worry
about moving the furniture around (Woodson, 2019).

3.4.5. Group dynamics

It should not be expected from less experienced students that they would automatically know
how to behave in a group. When left on their own, students’ personal characteristics will
begin to emerge; some will take over the leading role and some will stay in the background
(Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003). To battle this and ensure more even distribution of workload, a
teacher can assign subtasks and give each individual member something to do, for example
write down, dictate, listen, draw, report… However, these tasks should be interdependent and
should serve a common goal to achieve group cohesion (Dörnyei & Murphey, 2003; Ward,
1987). It is also helpful to assign the role of a group leader to one of the students, but
preferably not those who are otherwise taking up the leading roles in the classroom (Ward,
1987).

3.4.6. Evaluation

Evaluating groupwork, especially with a final grade, is a difficult task for a teacher. The first
step in the evaluating process can be self- or peer-reflective and open for a discussion among
the students, for example in form of a wrap-up session. This is an important step that can
provide the students with a much more comprehensive and meaningful feedback than can be
achieved with a simple numerical grade (Brown, 2001; Ramírez Salas, 2011). This can be
done within individual groups as well. In the beginning of groupwork, teacher can give one of
the students in each group a task to closely observe the effectiveness of the group and take

13
notes and briefly report their findings to their groupmates, perhaps also the teacher (Ward,
1987).

Ultimately, the teacher must make a choice whether to grade the final product (which
promotes student cooperation but might be unfair if the workload among the students was
uneven), the input of each individual (which discourages cooperation and encourages
competition but is fairer in regards to work input), or both (Burke, 2011; Dörnyei & Murphey,
2003; Ward, 1987).
It is recommended that if the final product is graded, it should only count for a small
percentage of the grade (Burke, 2011).

4. Groupwork in distance learning

In this chapter, I will briefly discuss groupwork in the framework of distance learning in the
time of COVID-19 pandemic, because of which students in Slovenia had to stay at home and
rely on distance learning for extended periods of time in 2020 and 2021. Unfortunately, no
extensive research or papers accessible to me have been published yet on the topic
(groupwork specifically), this is why I would like to present findings based on short
conversations with the teachers and students of the elementary school in Dragomelj where I
spent some time in March for observational practice in the framework of the Psychology for
Teachers subject.

Here I present the results of the conversations with three teachers and two students. Teacher A
is the class teacher of the third grade. Teacher B is the class teacher of the fifth grade. Teacher
C is one of the English teachers. Student A is a fifth-grade student. Student B is an eight-
grade student.

For distance learning, the elementary school in Dragomelj initially tried to utilise their e-
learning classroom where they posted recorded lectures, demonstrations, explanations, tasks
for students to complete, and interactive activities. Relatively soon it became apparent that
this kind of approach will not suffice long-term, so they implemented the by-now-well-known

14
online learning software Zoom which can be used for live online teaching. An interesting
feature that Zoom offers are the so-called “break-out rooms”. Using this feature, the teacher
can split Zoom participants into smaller groups, where they can interact only with each other,
without the rest of the class hearing or seeing them.

Questions that I posed to the teachers were the following:

- When you were teaching online, how much time did you devote to groupwork
compared to when teaching in the classroom?
- Did you utilise the Zoom break-out rooms or some other means for groupwork when
you were teaching online?
Questions that I posed to the students were the following:
- Did your teachers devote any time to groupwork during the period of distance
learning and was that more or less time than before?
- What means did they use to conduct groupwork?

The teachers’ answers to the first question were unanimous: much less time was devoted to
groupwork in the online environment. Both teachers A and B said that they did assign
groupwork to students particularly in the pre-Zoom period, but the means how to interact was
left up to the students to sort out in their free time. Teacher A also added that she organised a
long-term “group activity” which consisted of group members inserting some text into
individual empty slots in the e-classroom and which did not require actual interaction between
the group members. The students said that there were fewer everyday group activities but
there were some long-term group projects which in some cases substituted oral or written
exams. Student B claimed that there were too many of such projects and it was difficult to
keep track of the workload and effectively communicate with different sets of group
members.

All of the interviewees were familiar with the Zoom’s break-out rooms and experienced using
it at least a few times. Teacher C said that she was very excited about them and tried to use it
in the English-language lessons as much as possible, but that they were not very effective
with younger students because they mostly used their groupwork time to socialise and speak
in their mother tongue and it was difficult to control them. Teacher A said that she used the
break-out rooms a few times but that her class is very small to begin with and due to many
absences by the students she was often left with too few students that it would be worth

15
organising smaller groups. Both students said that their teachers sometimes used break-out
rooms, but that groupwork was more often in form of projects and for that they used other
means to communicate, mostly Viber, Gmail, WhatsApp and Facebook.

5. Bibliography

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