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embarrassment. Watching shy students blossom and gain confidence through collaborative learning
is one of the great pleasures of being a teacher.
You’ll be aware that getting students to engage in group activities can be hugely beneficial. It
encourages team work and mutual support; it can bring a competitive dimension to learning which
can motivate students to
strive harder for results and, perhaps most importantly of all, it exposes
them to other people’s thought processes and problem solving abilities which helps them to develop
their own reasoning skills. This sort of collaborative learning teaches students to think more deeply
and laterally simply because the answer isn’t supplied by the teacher or a textbook - they have to
work it out for themselves.
But not all students find it easy to take an active role within a group. Shy students can tend to
feel overwhelmed when the focus is put on them
in class and it takes time, patience and skill to
draw them out and help them to become a confident contributor in group activities. What can you
do to encourage these students to participate [5].
For a
conversation class to succeed, the interpersonal atmosphere in the group must be
supportive. To speak up and participate in a conversation in a language that is foreign to them,
people need to feel free to take risks without fear of embarrassment.
Besides the times when teacher-led activities are taking place, there may be times when the
whole class will want to be involved together. This may be after a
group discussion where each
group can report on their discussion, mentioning the most interesting or amusing points that were
made. In a large class this could go on and on, so we would only ask a few groups to report. Or it
could simply be the contuniation of a discussion as whole class for a few minutes, but self-assured
students are more likely to contribute when the whole class is listening.
References:
1.
Webster. Third, New International Dictionary (Springfield, MA: MerriamWebster,
1993
)
2.
Joseph E. McGrace. Groups: interaction and performance. 1984
3.
Conclin, Mary Greer. Conversation What to Say and How to Say it. New York and London:
Funk & Wagnalls Company. 1912
4.
Leo Johes. The student centered classroom. Cambridge University Press. 2007
5.
http:/www.bbcactive.com/BBCActiveIdeasandResourses/EncouragingShyStudentstoParticipate
inGroups.aspx
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