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A Magic
Tool in the Classroom: Pair Work
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I hear and I forget.
I listen and I remember.
I do and I understand.
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"Learning by doing" is a basic
philosophy for many educators. But how do we get students to "do" English? I
would like to invite you to experience the following activities now as if you were in the
classroom. I hope to show you that pair work can be introduced into high-school classrooms
without interfering with regular teaching procedures and study for entrance examinations.
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Now suppose that you are in an English classroom
and you have just finished comprehension checks on one part of a lesson in a reading
class. At this stage in a traditional classroom, you will have the students read the part
in chorus following the teacher. Instead, however, imagine introducing "Friendly
Shadowing."
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In this activity, you ask one student in a pair
to read the textbook concentrating on the sense groups of each sentence, and ask the other
student to repeat what the first student is reading without looking at the textbook. /
Sense groups / are clauses / or groups of words / in a series / that cohesively fit
together./ If you want / you can divide the text / with slashes / as I have done / with
these two sentences. /
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When students actually do it, have them exchange
roles half way through; or for short passages, have them exchange roles and repeat the
same. The important thing is to make the readers aware of their partners speaking pace.
You can use this activity as review work instead of chorus reading. You may see 45
students in one class talking at the same time. Noisy, yes. But involved! The first time
you present this to them, you need to demonstrate to the students yourself. Read in sense
groups and have them repeat. Then switch and have one student read while you repeat.
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What is happening to students when shadowing in
pairs? Repeating what one student is reading and speaking, as opposed to choral
repetition, is easier, more efficient, and more comfortable for at least three reasons.
First, working one to one makes us more involved in the task. It is hard to be uninvolved
when dealing directly with one person. Second, it's easier to adjust to each other, to
speak louder or more slowly. Both weak students and strong students can get the chance to
help each other cooperatively. The key words here are involvement, adjustment, and cooperation
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And thirdly, students can learn with less
stress. No one wants to make a mistake in reading and speaking in front of the whole
class. In this activity, that fear becomes less because students are talking with one
other person instead of many others.
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Let's look at another activity. Now you are
teaching grammar, a subject that usually dominates the high-school English curriculum.
Particularly at exam-oriented high schools, grammar teaching through drill type exercises
is popular at least among teachers if not students. Instead of explaining and drilling,
you ask one student from each pair to put his/ her head on the desk and take a nap or
otherwise not listen to the teacher. You explain a grammar point to the "awake"
students and ask them to take notes, so they can explain it to the "napping"
students. Then you ask awake students to teach the grammar point to their partners.
Although you may fear that some students really fall asleep, you will see that students,
who at other times may sleep, become very excited.
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Although this activity takes a little longer
than simply being told by teachers, the students are actively involved in learning and
teaching grammar. One of the reasons is that it is hard for students to be uninvolved when
they are conveying their knowledge, teaching their classmates, and sharing their
information and ideas.
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What is happening in their minds when
reformulating? You can see the students paying more attention to specific grammar points,
getting the gist attentively. That is because they are required to teach their partners
later. They have a specific and clear task. Reformulation helps to promote one's
attention. They become clear about what they understand and what they do not. As a result,
it seems to me that reformulation helps facilitate understanding and increase retention.
Teaching is learning more deeply, as most teachers realize.
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Some teachers feel that with pair work there
will be more mistakes than in a traditional classroom. Research shows that there aren t.
Long and Porter (1985) report that students perform at the same level of grammatical
accuracy in student-centered group work as in traditional teacher-fronted work. Of course
you can reduce students mistakes even more if you do a demonstration reading first, for
"Friendly Shadowing," and put clear notes on the blackboard for "Grammar
Reformulation."
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Another variation of pair work that has worked
well for my students is called "Friendly Dictation." Suppose you have finished
teaching a lesson in a reading class. You have the students listen to a brief summary of
the story and then give them a dictation on that summary. In doing so, encourage them to
work in pairs and to look at each other's dictation. The key to success in this activity
is for the teacher to deliberately dictate the summary too fast for the students to write
down exactly; however, they can see each other's work and use the key words to complete
the summary. This activity can be used as a review task.
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Another variation is named "Messenger
Dictation." After the students have learned a particular grammar point, you can have
them make their own sentences using the specific structure. One of the pair works as a
messenger, the other as a writer. After completing his/her own sentences, the messenger
stands up, walks around the classroom, and goes to other pairs in order to see and
memorize the sentences they have written. The messenger goes back to the writer and
dictates the sentence. This cycle is repeated several times within a certain time period.
In this activity, teachers can have the students recycle information, as well as language,
experientially.
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Do you think your classroom will become too
chaotic for you to stay in control? You may find the class a little bit chaotic but the
students are actively involved! Using handouts and specific tasks through demonstration
will help make these pair-work activities a smooth and effective way to learn. For my
students they turned many boring texts into interesting material. It's magic. Have fun!
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- Long, M. and P. Porter. 1985. Group work, interlanguage talk, and second language
acquisition. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 2, pp. 207 28.
- Murphey, Tim. 1992. ShadEchoooow ShadEchoooow. . . . Nagoya Avenues, 44, July-August,
pp. 8 9.
- . 1993. Remember your memory. . . It's what you make it! Nagoya Avenues, 47, January,
pp. 12 13. }
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Takahiro
Fujita teaches English at Kariya kita Senior High School in Aichi-ken, Japan. He
is interested in second-language acquisition, and is working on a Master's thesis on that
subject. |
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