An Investigation Of Pairwork And Groupwork In The English Class Of Junior High Schools Under The New Curriculum Standards

In July2001, the New English Curriculum Standards were issued by the Ministryof Education. The document clearly points out that, the key point of the presentcurriculum reform is to put right the deviation of excessive stress on the teaching andlearning of grammar knowledge to the training of the comprehensive capacities inusing the target language, and the practical part of English learning. Therefore, thereare more Pairworks and Groupworks in the English books to meet the needs of thestudents. Pairwork and Groupwork are language communicative activities involvingtwo or more students to do and complete a special task together. They can change theboring and tedious atmosphere of the traditional class, stimulate the interest of thestudents, and afford opportunities for the students to practice what they have learned.Besides, they provide platform for the students to show themselves and to learn tocooperate with each other.To better know the current status of the practice of Pairwork and Groupworkin junior high schools, this thesis conducts a survey in six junior high schools inSanya. Then by the methods of classroom observation, questionnaires, andinterviews for both the teachers and students, this thesis makes a systematicalanalysis of the current status of the practice of Pairwork and Groupwork in theSanya junior high schools, explores teachers and students’ attitudes towards theseactivities, and the problems during the practice of Pairwork and Groupwork.From the investigation, it is found that most of the teachers have conducted thePairwork or Groupwork in their classes. Only6.3%of the teachers have “never” or“seldom” conducted Pairwork, and10.4%of them have “never” or “seldom”conducted Groupwork. However, due to the influence left by the exam-orientededucation, some teachers still feel confused about how to balance the relationshipbetween the training of students’ communicative ability and the achievement ofbetter grades in English examinations within necessarily limited classroom time.Thus, even though there have added the Pairworks and Groupworks in the books,some teachers may not conduct them as well as possible for one reason or another.Even some teachers may have set their minds on the practice of them, the differentinterest for pairwork and groupwork between teachers and students worsen thesituation since some teachers just carry out these activities haphazardly withoutconsidering the needs and interest of the students. Besides, students may not cooperate for reasons such as they are too shy to speak English; they don’t likeEnglish or the topics, etc. As a result, the students’ participation and interest in thoseactivities may not be as satisfactory as possible. In addition, data from theinvestigation shows that, apart from the different preference between theteachers and the students, they have showed some similar attitudes towardPairwork and Groupwork.86.4%of the students and65.2%of the teachers “like” or“especially like” Pairwork and Groupwork.79.7%of the students and85.4%of theteachers hold the view that they are useful for the students’ English ability, and68.5%of the students “hope” or “especially hope” to add more such activities. However,there existing many problems during the practice of Pairwork and Groupwork. Suchas students’ habits of using their mother tongue or talk about other topics in their life;most of the speaking time is taken by the active students; teachers’and students’casual attitudes towards the tasks; discord between the group members; impropercorrection or comments from the teachers.In brief, it is obvious that the current status of the practice of Pairwork andGroupwork in junior high schools is not very satisfactory. Much improvement needsto be made to meet perfection, especially the class strategies and the management ofthe teachers. Based on the findings and data from the study, this paper has given somespecific suggestions on teachers, students and materials respectively, and somesuggested sulutions on these problems, so that it can help to improve the quality ofPairwork and Groupwork and fulfill the improvement of comprehensive languagecompetence for the students.