If you've ever been in an English classroom in Taiwan, you may find the following scene familiar. As you walk in, you find the desks lined up in columns facing the teacher, platform and blackboard.
The teacher is explaining lots of words, phrases, grammar and sentence structures by lecturing, while the students are busy filling their books or notebooks with many English and Chinese words.
The class looks awfully neat and disciplined, doesn't it? However, the teaching effectiveness is really questionable because it is not very student-centered and students depend on the teacher all the time, waiting for instructions such as repeating, reading aloud, translating sentences, answering perfunctory questions and so on.
If we agree that English is best learnt through communication and interaction, making students work together in pairs or groups is one of the best interpersonal approaches in the classroom. Group work usually means groups of six students or less, with the optimal number being three or four.
As mentioned above, many teachers lecture to teach English, making students feel that learning English is like learning math instead of a language for daily communication. In many cases, the teacher, not students, is the one doing most of the talking in the classroom.
From the perspective of learning theory, student learning retention (how much students remember after two weeks) is only about 5 percent when taught by lecturing. Only 5 percent! No wonder many teachers complain that they work so hard to teach every sentence in the texts but students still can't remember them.
The reason is simple: students don't initiate conversations or actively take part in learning; on the contrary, they are just passive learners, receiving knowledge by only listening to the teacher. It is likely that the low participation rate in the classroom accounts for the low learning retention.
Conversely, students' higher involvement in the English learning process yields higher retention of the material.
For example, research shows that students' retention rates are much higher when they work together, such as in group discussion (50 percent) and cooperative learning (75 percent), compared with traditional teaching methods like lecturing and reading. Thus, teachers should facilitate students' learning by getting them to work together, instead of mostly talking.
Most teachers (myself included) tend to talk too much in the classroom, without allowing enough time for students to respond to them or to initiate talking. However, if we as teachers realize that no matter how hard we try, the efficacy of lecturing is very limited, then we should make students work together in groups as much as possible.
Research has made the surprising finding that individual student practice time can increase five-fold over traditional methodology if even only half of the English class time is spent on group work. Therefore, the greatest advantage of group work is the amount of English output produced by each student. We all know that output is no less important than input since most of us learn how to speak English by actually speaking it. The more students use English in communication, the more they will acquire communicative competence.
In addition to less dependence on the teacher and more individual output, working together has many advantages. When working together, students can exchange their ideas and learn from each other.
The atmosphere of group discussion also makes them feel more secure and less anxious, and builds up their confidence and motivation in using English. Most importantly, they feel that they use English in a meaningful and authentic way, instead of learning English in a monotonous and decontextualized way. All of these can enhance students' English use via interaction and communication.
Note that English teachers cannot simply assign students a topic and then let them discuss it without any preparation. Getting students to work together is no less laborious (though much more effective) than the traditional method.
Teachers have to plan well for any interactive activities before getting started. Teachers need to give students explicit instructions and model the activities, teach them collaborative skills, and orchestrate and time the entire procedure.
While students are working together, teachers should walk around (instead of sitting at the front grading papers), listen in on as many groups as possible and take notes to give students feedback later.
Letting students work together not only helps English teachers better cope with larger classes but also effectively facilitates students' English learning through a communicative and fun way.
Kao Shih-fan is an assistant professor at Jinwen University of Science and Technology.
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
By now, most of Taiwan has heard Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an’s (蔣萬安) threats to initiate a vote of no confidence against the Cabinet. His rationale is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government’s investigation into alleged signature forgery in the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) recall campaign constitutes “political persecution.” I sincerely hope he goes through with it. The opposition currently holds a majority in the Legislative Yuan, so the initiation of a no-confidence motion and its passage should be entirely within reach. If Chiang truly believes that the government is overreaching, abusing its power and targeting political opponents — then
RSS