Group Work

An investigation into the disadvantages of group work in speaking classes of the first- year students of Faculty of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University and some suggested solutions

1. The rationale of the research

Nowadays, it is not daring to say that English is one of the most important languages in the world. It is estimated that at least half of the world population currently speaks English. English is used almost important national events and organizations, such as economy events, World Trade organization, etc. Futhermore, more and more people would like to study English for travelling, going abroad to study or going on bussiness. Hence, it is believed that English is the only language that truly links the whole world together.

To master English well, learners have to use the right way to study. A great deal of professors state that for many recent years, group work has become popular and has been widely applied in teaching and learning English. Group work provides opportunities to use the target language (Areta Gorgón, 2008) and help group’s members study more vocabularies (Le Pham Hoai Huong, 2005). Long and Porter (1985) state that working in group increases language pratice opportunities which improves the quality of student talk.

Small group is asserted to be necessary to almost students because it promotes cooperation (Flowerdew, 1998) and opportunities of communication. When working in groups, students can plan and evaluate group’s study (Zhenhui, 2001). In a broader view, group work is a good environment for learners to develop their thoughts and ideas. Vygosky (1986) said that intellect is developed in social communication.

However, in reality, “Is there any disadvantages of group work?” Many researches have been done to answer this question. It is a fact that these researches show a great number of obstacles in group work.

Personally, I am also rise in my mind a question that “Do students at Faculty of Foreign Languages have the same problems?” Hence, I decide to do a research on this topic to investigate the difficulties of group work in speaking classes of the first-year students of Faculty of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University and find out some suggested solution for this problem.

2. The aim of the research

The research is conducted to investigate the disadvantages of group work in the classes of English speaking skill of the first year students at Foreign Language Faculty, Thai Nguyen University.

3. The research question

3.1 Research question: What difficulties do the first year students at Foreign Language Faculty, Thai Nguyen University encounter in working in groups in the classes of English speaking skill?

3.2 Hypothesis: Those are the following drawbacks:

1. Arguments and