The importance of group classroom activities

By Azys Syaiful Anwar

English class is used to be as communicative as possible because teaching English is not only about understanding the grammar but also how to apply it in the real world. In some cases, students like to work independently. They tend to be more comfortable with their own opinion when doing the tasks or exercises. 

 

Giving the assessment as the evaluation of the lesson is very important. Teachers should know their students ability and in which point students may find the learning problem. Teachers usually give many individual exercises to measure students’ understanding level of the lesson that they taught. 

In Indonesia, TEFL teacher may usually use an extra-exercise book (non-textbook) intended for individual work. This book which is mostly known as LKS (students’ worksheet) is written based on the related textbook. This book doesn’t support interaction between students and teachers or students to students. It’s mere an exercises that mostly presents multiple choices as the main assessment. 

Actually, the student-centered approach to improve learners' communicative competence has been adopted by some language teachers. Group work, one of the most important class activities for developing students' communicative ability, is gradually being applied to teach English as a foreign language (EFL). Group work is very useful for TEFL classroom. It helps the learners to involve into various interaction types and support a more conducive and cooperative class. 

When students work in group, they seem to lose their pressure of the listening to full explanation of the teachers. Moreover, they can boost their communication experience and share their opinions to reach a final solution. It is a simple forum for students to solve a problem with their own perspective. Group work helps students to improve their cognitive and affective aspects.