Task Type And Teacher's Role: Two Important Factors In Effective Group Learning

Group work is based on two theories of language teaching: cooperative learning and communicative approach. While whole class instruction remains the most common mode in education, the use of group work is a growing trend. Researches have proved that group work has a number of advantages. It stimulates the learners' experience of various types of interaction. It helps generate a more relaxed and cooperative classroom atmosphere. Students are more likely to feel free of the pressure of being listened to by the teacher and so more ready to speak. However, the successful application of group work is not as easy as it appears to be. It depends on many variables in real classroom setting: surrounding social climate, students' character and motivation, topic, task type, teacher's organization of group work, etc. This paper mainly focuses on two factors that affect group work: task type and teacher's role. The two questions that the author is going to study are as follows: Question One: What a kind of task types (required information exchange oroptional information exchange) is more effective?Question Two: To what extent do teacher's skills in organizing group work affect students' performance?Through experiments in a real classroom, the author investigates the effects of two task types-required information exchange task and optional information exchange task-in group work by quantitative approach. The result shows that, first, required information exchange task brings more language production than optional information exchange task. Second, required information exchange task results in more balanced language production.7This paper also combines quantitative approach and qualitative approach to examine the teacher's role in group work. It is found out that teacher's skills in organizing group work affect students' performance greatly.The main thrust of this paper is to suggest the improvement of group work design of EFL textbooks and put forward some skills in organizing group work in order to make group work more effectively. Some directions for the future research are also suggested.