A Research On Application Of The Strategy Of Group Work For English Teaching In High School

This article describes the features of group work and studies the factors that affect the performance of group work in class. The research is carried out through the observation inside classroom. Case study and questionnaires are also used to carry out the study of group work. Group work does improve the students' English ability. However the degree and specific item on English ability is different.Traditional teaching approach such as grammar-translation is focused on the grammar structure analysis. Examination is the main task to fulfill for both teachers and students. Teacher's talk occupies most of the class time. These influence training of students' communicative competence. Hence, there is a need of innovation in English language teaching in middle school. Communicative approach features student-centered, activity-based, group-centered. Students rather than the teacher are in the center of the class. There are many different kinds of activities in group work in order to complete the task set in the textbook.Group work is defined as a number of people who interact with one another. There are different types of group work such as group discussion, group debate and role-play. The characteristics of group work can be understood as collaborative learning and cooperative learning. In group work, both the teacher and the students have different roles from traditional approach. Teacher's role changes from an organizer, a controller and evaluator to a co-learner, facilitator, acting as a guide and a coach. On the other hand, students change their role from a listener, observer, and note taker to problem solver, contributor, and discussant.Some doubts and problems arise from the observation in classroom. In order to solve these problems, I did some research. I chose one class that I taught from October 2003 to June2004. In classroom, group work has been arranged in all the four teaching aspects such as speaking, listening, reading and writing. According to some doubts, questionnaire and observation, it is hypothesized that both external and internal factors affect group work. For instance, the proper relationship between teacher and students affect the group work, the extrovert learns more quickly thanintrovert does.Through the observation, students' marks in the examinations, I analyze the factors that influence students' behaviors in Group work. For example, the relationship of teacher and students, the appropriate topic, co-educational group and single -sexed group. Individual differences, such as learning aptitude, personality, communication apprehension, field independence and field dependence, and motivation and attitude. The relationship of teacher and students is very important to determine the performance of group work. Appropriate topics can make students perform better, such as some topics related to their everyday life. In co-educational group, students share much warmer and more cooperative atmosphere than those in single-sexed group. It does not necessarily comply with such regulation as high language aptitude with good language learning and low language aptitude with bad language learning in the experimental class. Extroversion students can be very active and effective in group work because they are talkative and showing great enthusiasm toward any kind of group organization. On the other hand, introvert students choose to keep silent and reluctant to join in discussion. Communication apprehension affects students' performance. But by frequent practice, such kind of students having communication apprehension can benefit from group work a lot. Field dependent students exert a good performance in group work .On the contrast, independent students do not perform as well as dependent students. Motivation and attitude also affect students' performance of group work. Students who have high motivation and positive attitude towards group work definitely participate in all kinds of activities much actively.During the experiment, I also found out that students also need some basic interpersonal skills in group work. Students must learn how to value what other people think. They need to be able to work well with others. Then group work will be more effective.