| The power of the group |
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| Written by Dariusz Sochacki | |
| Tuesday, 23 May 2006 | |
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The main problem students face on being presented with a topic like "Is euthanasia moral?" at their A-level examination is that of not knowing what to say even in the mother tongue. How on earth can anybody expect them to show their language proficiency in this situation? "How is this my business?" you will say, "I'm supposed to teach them English not to make them into bright, eloquent speakers or writers". Helping your students may be easier than you think. The whole problem stems from the fact that neither the teachers nor the students realise and appreciate the creative power of a group. Two heads are better than one - how banal, yet how true, I have found. Recently I organised (although there was little actual organising on my part involved - it sort of 'just happened') a brainstorming session in a class of sixteen seventeen-year-olds about advantages and disadvantages of living in a big city. The students, who had had no practice in composition writing and with whom no one had ever talked about the subject, produced so much language, such a variety of ideas and showed so much enthusiasm in the process that it could suffice for five compositions! And this is for one hour's unhindered, uncensored brainstorming. In this one lesson I discovered how powerful a group is when released from the shackles of classroom routine. And this is how it is done. You write the topic on the blackboard. You divide the students into groups of four to five, with a sheet of paper for each group. You tell them to write ANYthing that comes to their minds in connection with the subject. It is vital to emphasise the word 'anything'. However silly, irrelevant or inappropriate it seems, they should write it down. They should not think of sentences they will have to make with the words, just think of ideas and write them down. Polish or English does not matter. And so they will. You provide any help necessary, translate things for them, add your own ideas as you cruise among the groups, and you write the things you hear on the blackboard. After 20-30 minutes stop the group activity and do it on the blackboard with the whole class. Both you and your students will be amazed at the lexical explosion you will see. The next thing to do is to categorise the ideas into pros and cons, or advantages and disadvantages. This is where some discussion will arise. You can stimulate the students by saying that what they deem as an obvious advantage can be a drawback, and vice versa. Take five to ten minutes to do this. Next put the ideas under headings, categories, whatever will emerge from your discussion. Here, you might get categories such as PEOPLE, TRANSPORT, CRIME, ENTERTAINMENT, etc. Then you all decide which things you will discuss in what order, and which things you will disregard altogether. The only thing left to do now is write! Depending on the students' language proficiency you will get compositions with a different number of mistakes, but one thing you are sure to get is an abundance of ideas, which the students will find hard to exhaust within the 350-word limit. They will be grateful. My students were. And all this with little actual work on your part - they have done most of it! |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 June 2006 ) |
In a recent survey conducted among
(mostly secondary school) English teachers at the Jagiellonian University about
the most frequently appearing errors and problems in writing, content and its
organisation were the recurring items. Let me, then, concentrate on these two.
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