2. Pair and Groupwork that works
“Why use pair and groupwork?”
• It increases the amount of time students can talk in class.
• It improves the quality of talking, allowing for more of the
features of natural speech: hesitation, unfinished sentences,
etc.
• Speaking is an active process rarely carried out in isolation, so
it´s a natural framework for interaction: talking to someone as
in real life.
• It encourages a more communal classroom atmosphere and
helps to individualise language learning and teaching.
• It provides students with an opportunity to learn by doing
things for themselves.

3. Compare the pair/groupwork with the traditional
teaching.
TRADITIONAL TEACHING PAIR/GROUPWORK
The teacher initiates any exchange Students initiate their own exchanges
One student, usually selected by the teacher, Other students respond together
responds to the teacher
T Students judge the acceptability of their words
more naturally, whether other students have “got
the message”, as in real life.

4. Making pairwork work: a step-by-step overview
• Choose easy to manage activities first: start with short, simple activities and
progress from there. An effective starting point is a two minute pairwork
question/answer drill.
• Make sure students have got the language they need: try to predic the
words that students will need. Quickly rehearse the activity yourself. As ever, there
will always be unforseen language, but make sure you´ve taught the most or all of
the language that you know they´ll need.
• Choose the most appropriate grouping: pair or groupwork? This choice
obviously depends on the activity. Groupwork can be more enjoyable, specially for
games, activities in teams and larger tasks such as projects. Remember that you can
always begin in pairs and then combine these pairs into larger groups to compare
notes.
• Don´t forget to provide feedback: always provide feedback to the class as a
hole. Praise and encourage regularly to try to make students´learning a positive
experience and highlight what they´ve achieved.
Equally important is to respond to students as individuals sometimes. Over a term
make sure you´ve spoken to everybody face to face in English just to make them
feel that you care about their progress.

5. Everyday activities to familiarise students with pair and
groupwork.
• Do it together, not alone: discussing questions together: ask the questions
as usual but instead of asking one individual, make all students tell their partners
what they think the answer is. That way everybody gets a chance to answer. This
also works well for activities like “spot the mistake”. Put five sentences on the
board, each containing a mistake. In pairs, students have to spot the mistakes
together, orally agree what the correct version is, then tell you.
• doing homework together: it´s a great way to get mixed ability students to help
each other. The focus is on English, the product is in English and students have to
vocalise at least some of the words as they work together.
• Brainstorm together: predicting answers: before a gap-fill type activity (a
dialoge, song or reading comprehension) ask students to read the text together and
predict some of the answers before, they listen. This gives stronger students an
opportunity to help the weaker ones.

7. • Remember together: stories: after any story which they´ve read and have
time to digest, students can close their books and retell it to a partner. This
works best if the listener has a task to make him listen and not just go to
sleep while their partners talk. This works well after a picture story.
• Test your partner: this is the most obvious way to get students speaking
together and using each other as a language practice resourse.
 Students look at a page from the coursebook and make questions to each
other.
 Students walk round the classroom and ask each otherabout the objects
there( flachcards, posters)
 Students test each other on a group of known words from their vocabulary
notebooks.
• Rehearse together before any “performance”: pairs are a safe vehicle
for students to practise speaking before they do anything in front of the
whole class. It allows them more time to iron out any key mistakes, gives
them the confidence to see that they can really do it and makes them a little
less self- conscious.