The Language Teacher
September 1999
University Students' Perceptions Of Pair Work Tasks
Peter Burden
Teachers have for many years used pair work as a panacea for large classes and the accompanying problem of individual speaking time. Long and Porter (1985) outline some arguments for pair work, noting that it gives students greater practice opportunities, and allows students to escape from traditional teacher-fronted lessons where the teacher often asks questions to which the answer is already known. It also individualises the lesson, as the student is away from the public arena and is thus free to speak without inhibition with classmates rather than practicing language for its own sake. Slightly more complicated is the claim that pairwork involves negotiation of meaning or communicative consensus which leads to grammatical learning: Arguing that "attentiveness and involvement" are necessary for successful communication Gass and Seliger (1991) maintain, "It is precisely active involvement that is the facilitator of communication in that it charges the input and allows it to penetrate deeply" (p. 219).
However, do our students share our enthusiasm for the pedagogical and psychological raison d'etre for pair work, or do they see it in such terms as the chance for the teacher to have a rest from doing the talking? Are our students in Japan, often using pair work in monolingual dyads, equally convinced of its value? Many have come through a rigorous university entrance exam, preparation for which often entailed traditional, teacher-fronted lessons, and so perhaps have not been socialised to pair work as a learning tool. This paper aims to examine learner perceptions and attempts to explain teacher and learner mismatches.
Background: The penguin in the tuxedo
In two English Conversation classes at different universities I assigned the same pair work activities in the same week. Students each received a hand out which I had prepared of symbols ranging from everyday traffic signs to fairly obscure symbols found on packaging. The object of the task was (in pairs) to use modals (such as may, might, could etc. ) and adverbs (probably, perhaps, and maybe). The students were to ask and answer, agree and disagree, concede opinions and explain interpretations and generally to "negotiate meaning. "
Students in Class A attend a small, private university. There were only twelve students, second-year or above, studying English as an elective subject. Class B consisted of fifty-two freshmen at a national university studying English as a compulsory subject. They were all education majors, many of whom told me that they hoped to become English teachers.
Class A managed to fulfil the goals of the activity most satisfactorily. I had to draw the exercise to a close, as the students were so engrossed in attempting to communicate their ideas and to share opinions that the exercise went over the allotted time. It created a humorous atmosphere and the task obviously stretched their imagination. A symbol of a penguin wearing a bow tie and tuxedo led to some interesting speculations. The students were aware of, and sympathetic towards their partners, attempted to keep conversations going and paraphrased when misunderstandings occurred.
However, in contrast, many students in Class B seemed to display a poor motivation to learn. Using Good and Brophy's (1990, p. 47) definition, this meant a tendency to find the task meaningless, which led to a low persistence in on-task behaviour. In short, many students did not seem to want to put their language skills to communicative use, consistently choosing the quickest route to close the conversation, often without any negotiation. I did observe students engrossed in conversations, but in their mother tongue, and not about the task, while many were desultorily flicking through pages of their textbook or looking out of the window. Perhaps most unfortunate of all, some were studiously ignoring their partners, indicating that they probably had not even attempted to start the task. Overall, they seemed to be waiting for the "proper" lesson to resume. During the subsequent class discussion I was asked for my interpretation of the penguin in a tuxedo. Recalling the imaginative responses of Class A, I replied that I did not know for sure but it could mean a public restroom, or a refrigerated area or perhaps directions to a ballroom for social dancing. This was evidently an unsatisfactory answer for some students, one of whom flung down his pen in exasperation as if to say, "Now, what was the point of that exercise?"
Why is there a gap between teacher intention and learner interpretation?
Nunan (1990) writes that the effectiveness of a programme depends on the expectations of the learners, and if their subjective needs and perceptions related to the learning process are not taken into account, there can be a "mismatch" of ideas. Kumaravadivelu (1991) in agreement notes that "the narrower the gap between teacher intention and learner interpretation of a given task, the greater are the chances of achieving desired learning outcomes" (p. 98). Class B, therefore seemed to have misconceptions and some possible explanations are summarised below:
Strategic Misconception
This refers to teacher and learner perceptions of the objectives of learning tasks. Ellis (1988, p. 202) draws a distinction between a "content" syllabus which states the target knowledge as a product, and a "procedural" syllabus which describes the kind of behavior which the learner will have to undertake in order to develop second language knowledge. In the "penguin in a tuxedo" exercise, learning was seen as a cognitive task which needs automaticity and integration of skills through meaningful opportunities for students to demonstrate understanding of modals and adverbs. The aim of the task was to generate discussion and negotiated conversation. All too often the students used the simplest strategies to reach a conclusion as quickly as possible, since they interpreted the accomplishment of the task to be its successful completion, rather than sustained discussion.
Pedagogic Misconception
The students' observed confusion of process and final product led them to perceive me as the ultimate supplier of the correct answer at the end of the task. Therefore, the students felt that they did not have to try very hard or persist in coming up with an answer during the exercise. This led to the frustration I noted earlier of a student flinging down his pen when I stated that I was unsure of a symbol's meaning. The students did not have the satisfaction of a concrete answer in front of them.
Methodological Mismatch
Good and Brophy (1990, p. 409) note that task relevance is the learner's perception of how instruction is related to their personal needs or goals. Those instrumental needs are served when the content of the lesson matches what the students themselves believe they need. Some students may prefer traditional types of learning with a desire for accuracy and a clear sense of progression. When students value error correction highly, the communicative approach, with its game-like activities and pictures, may seem artificial and be relatively unpopular.
Learning Style Mismatch
Oxford et al. (1992, p. 440) write that learning styles are " biologically and developmentally imposed sets of characteristics that make some teaching methods wonderful for some and terrible for others." Reid (1987), Hyland (1994), and Ozeki (1995) conducted questionnaire surveys and concluded that Japanese university students prefer visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and individual learning to pair or group work. Many of the students' classroom orientation influenced their behaviour particularly in terms of value placed on, and attention given to learning tasks.
Student Mismatch
Some students in class B were ignoring their partners, displaying a lack of "learner receptiveness" (Allright and Bailey, 1994, p.158), whereby "able" students may feel "they have nothing to gain" from interacting with "less efficient" students who in turn feel demoralised by the perceived superior performance of their partner.
Motivational Mismatch
Berwick and Ross (1989) write that the pressure of university entrance exams channels motivation to learn into proficiency with little communicative value. This extrinsic motivation drops off when the student enters a university and English is often seen as having little purpose.
"Mug and Jug" Theory
Arguably, previous learning experiences during high school with the near synonymous grammar-translation approach with its overemphasis on language rules have influenced the students. Even though the Monbusho seems to support more communicative teaching (Ministry, 1997), teachers have complained that approved textbooks are boring and lack authentic language and communicative activities (Templin, 1997). High school education is based essentially on the traditional "mug and jug" theory (Rogers, 1983, p. 136), in which the teachers ask themselves, "How can I make the jug hold still while I fill it from the jug with these facts that the curriculum planners and I regard as valuable?" The freshman student may see the role of the teacher to impart knowledge, and so the communicative classroom, where feedback and correction play less of a role, may call for a cultural leap and thus disconcert students.
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The Rationale for the Questionnaire
To get some tentative data about these questions, I decided to give a questionnaire based on attitudes towards pair work to a third group of students, national university freshmen at the end of their first semester. Would the students, as Hyland (1994) observed, be more accepting of pair work over a period of time, or would the findings back up the observations of Class B that pair work is not always seen as a valid learning instrument?
Recent interest in learner-centered education implies that all who participate in learning have a legitimate interest in its quality and progress. Students are often the most logical evaluators of the quality and effectiveness of course elements. The Monbusho (1997) also recognises that improvements in both lesson content and teaching method rely on self-monitoring by teachers and student evaluatiion of the extent to which classes are meeting their expectations.
Results
There were 161 replies, which were converted to percentages. Due to rounding, the figures do not always total100%.
After 15 weeks the students appear to have become acclimatised, to a degree, to the teaching methods of foreign teachers. There is a spread of learning styles with only translation being seen as less than beneficial. It is clear that the preferred learning instrument is talking to the teacher, with pair work also highly favoured. In the absence of direct contact with the teacher, pair work is seen as the next best option.
This seemingly contradicts Reid's (1987) results that Japanese students had a dislike of group work, as 80% stated that they learned better by doing something, with 88% disagreeing that working alone is good. However, over 40% doubt whether pair work provides sufficient practice, and 48% saying that they doubt whether they could learn new words from their partner, indicating that they perhaps undervalue, or are unaware of, the benefits of negotiating meaning. Perhaps students need to be shown the cognitive benefits of negotiation, which would encourage greater on-task persistence.
The results here can be interpreted positively with only a small percentage of students claiming that they never use strategies when there are misunderstandings in pair work. However a majority of students admitted they at least sometimes gave up and over 90% spoke in Japanese. In other words, most learners at some point can not adjust their speaking to make the speech production comprehensible to the listener and are thus reducing chances of language acquisition. Varonis and Gass (1985) note that learners will not acquire language by being talked at, they have to be actively involved in negotiating both the quality and the quantity. Comprehensibility is crucial in determining whether spoken language works as input.
Letting the students into the picture
Looking back, Class A fulfilled the task-goals and was highly motivated. As eight of the 12 had undertaken a homestay, they perceived the similarities between pair work and "real world" dialogues, while Class B was unaware of the objectives at either the curriculum or individual lesson levels. Although they have preconceptions about what form a learning experience should take, they may be ambivalent about expressing them, in the belief that it is the teacher's job to teach. If the teacher adopts a less authoritarian role, the students may feel that the teacher is not doing the job properly. Since students often translated or talked about something else during pair-work, they may well have felt that the purpose of the activity was relaxation rather than promotion of language acquisition. Therefore it should be no surprise for learners to let L2 communicative opportunities pass if it is more convenient to use Japanese. Yet by doing so, they are missing opportunities to create modified output.
In addressing a range of learning styles which are modified by the teacher when explaining the value of "communicative" activities, Tarone and Yule (1989, p. 9) talk of ways in which both teacher and student can fulfill their expectations of what counts in the learning experience: "fight 'em, join 'em, or channel 'em," with the last being perhaps the most effective, Brown (1994, p. 176) refers to "setting the climate": impressing on the students the necessity of pair-work practice for future success. When students feel that the directions for a task are not clear, or are unsure of the purpose, "you are inviting students to take short cuts via the native language." Therefore the teacher needs to encourage knowledge of the most frequently used rubrics and using them in an initial learning exercise or game should ensure future understanding. Brown goes on to say that appealing to motivational factors is necessary for the learners to see the real uses of English in their own lives. Stevick (1980) has noted that successful communication is dependent on attentiveness and involvement in the discourse by all the participants, leading to necessary "charge."
As learning takes place through voluntary interaction, the threat of the classroom can be alleviated if learners are psychologically prepared. In order to impress upon students the importance of practice for success, the teacher could prepare a handout for the first class written in the native language for the students to read because they will be more willing to participate if they understand how classes operate.
Appropriate pair work tasks
Interestingly, Pica (1987) shows that modified social interaction was not an inevitable outcome of students' working together, but instead was conditioned by the nature of the classroom pair or group work activities in which they participated. During the "penguin in a tuxedo" activity, participants did little work to clarify or confirm message content, or check comprehensibility. This leads to nonparticipation, truncated dialogues and low on-task persistence. Although there is a sense of pleasure in stating meaning that is felt to be one's own, there is a danger of frustration as meanings are neither well defined nor easy to articulate. Both Prabhu (1987) and Pica recommend information-gap activities, involving the transfer of information in front of each student, rather than having them always come up with their own. The participants must work equally and cooperatively to complete the task, and to reach a successful conclusion, individual participants cannot withhold information, nor can contributions be ignored. A classroom event is created in which students strive to make themselves understood.
Hancock (1997) has noted that during pair work of participants of the same mother tongue, the speakers switch between a "literal frame" as their normal selves and a "non-literal frame" when they are speaking the target language. The latter implies a performance and is "on record," suggesting that it is for an audience. When participants are tape-recorded they attempt to keep off record asides off the tape, and so during regular pair work practice there is a need to heighten task-awareness to encourage extended discourse. The idea of an audience keeping the student"on record" is crucial, yet it is impossible for the teacher to be everywhere at once. An idealised listener needs to be created, with tape recorders one solution. If using recorders is not practical, using dummy microphones or appealing to imagination to create such an idealised audience can also be tried.
Keeping the students in English
Pair work does not always succeed in creating natural patterns, as task design often makes learners so intent on "formulating their contributions as determined by the activity rubric" (McCarthy, 1991, p. 128), that they pay little attention to the contributions of others. This leads to students ignoring the natural patterns of back channel and utterance completion. Richards and Schmidt (1983) show that pair work conversations consist of Q-A-Q-A exchanges. Learners need to answer, then give extra information and then follow up by asking another question. Awareness training in how turns are given and gained may help sustain on-task concentration, and tape recording of pair work interactions may be useful here as well. Students can be asked to consider communicative problems and evaluate the success of various strategies. Lexical realisations of turn management can be taught directly, and paralinguistic drop in pitch, head turning, eye contact and gesture can all be made apparent through authentic video highlighting the students' own communicative lack and significant cultural differences. The teaching of "conversation" requires more than parroting dialogues, in lip service to communication through situational encounters; it also must focus on strategies for conversational interactions requiring more than correct, grammatical sentences. Elicitation devices to receive topic clarification, echoing parts of sentences for recycling and topic shifts can be covered by considering both the transactional and interactional uses of language.
Before undertaking a role-play exercise, brainstorming and topic generation through whole class discussion of related language establishes schemata and should cover vocabulary that the student will want to say. After introductory activities, the students practice a dialogue that serves as a model, and then performs a role-play with cue cards that have been prepared by the teacher from authentic dialogues. The students then listen to, or preferably view on video, native speakers performing a role-play and then compare the differences between language functions and meanings. Feedback leads to heightened awareness and the learners can introduce effective means and a range of expressions into their strategic competence.
Conclusion
Questionnaire data can yield varied interpretations, along the lines of the half full or half empty glass, and indeed looking at the tables one could be optimistic about students' beliefs about the value of pair work tasks. However the tendency to give up or to speak in Japanese indicate perhaps that some students do not have a clear grasp of the key reason for pair work: that languages are not learned through memorisation of language, but internalising language that is made comprehensible through persistence and an emphasis on understandable conversational interactions. Therefore, the classroom teacher needs to raise students' awareness of the importance of pair work and to teach strategies enabling the student to continue the conversation. After all, simply put, one learns how to "do" conversation by practicing it, and it is only when there is an incentive and a need to communicate that the necessary communicative "charge" is introduced.
References
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