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The Language Teacher | |
Just as communicative approaches have become orthodox in language teaching, pair work has established itself as a stock tool in teachers' repertoires. It's so standard, in fact, that we rarely take time to look at what is really happening when learners work together in pair activities. In this article, I'll consider several overlooked aspects of pair work. Just What is Pairwork For?Why do we use pair work? For many practical reasons. First, it's an efficient way to increase student participation. In large classes, how else could each learner get enough practice? Second, interacting with partners is motivating. Both of these reasons are true, but do they miss the point when it comes to Japanese learners? To understand what really happens during pair work, one needs to consider the context of Japanese education. Pairwork is, of course, a form of groupwork, working in cooperation with others. The idea of cooperative learning is certainly familiar to our students. Indeed, Japanese elementary school is based on the concept of groupwork: cooperative tasks, ranging from hangakushu (group study) to cleaning the classroom itself are standard (Anderson, 1993). To uncover the real agenda behind these group tasks, it might be useful to consider a type of pair/group work that violates our learners' common sense. Peer-critiquing is very much the fashion in ELT literature. In peer-critiquing, learners review their partner's writing and make suggestions for improvement. The technique often fails miserably with Japanese and other East-Asian students (see Carson & Nelson, 1994, 1996; Zhang, 1995). Japanese students will do it, but it's often little more than a spelling and mechanics check. Is it strange that such a group-oriented task should flop in a group-oriented culture? Perhaps learner reticence occurs because peer-critiquing is based on a very western, individualistic concept of the group as a unit of efficiency. It maximizes practice and learning for the individual. For our students, on the other hand, the purpose of the group is to work together. Peer-critique singles people out and puts them at risk of losing face. Interpretation: The purpose of being a group is to be a group--to work and learn together. In the learners' minds, efficiency has nothing to do with it. Crossing the GapsThat learners in pairs use English to cross an information gap should be a given. However, it isn't. There are still many classes and books filled with display questions: those motivation-sucking pseudo-tasks where students ask and answer questions they already know the answers to. My favorite example comes from a recently revised textbook, in which a photo of Gorbachev appears. Students are supposed to ask the tag question, "Gorbachev is president of the USSR, isn't he?" Actually, that was a brilliant question--for about 10 days in August, 1991. Back then, nobody watching the attempted coup d'eat on TV was sure if Gorbachev was president or not. But the rest of the time, the question is either meaningless or impossible to answer. It's as if I asked, "Ja Vielsker was prime minister of Norway, wasn't she?" If you know, there's no reason to say. If you don't, you can't answer at all. (Actually, "Ja Vielsker" is Norway's national anthem. The prime minister was Gro Harlem Brudtland.) Display questions do little more than waste time and demotivate students. Learners need to be moving information. Unfortunately, with the introduction of a more communicative syllabus in Japanese public schools, crossing an information gap is often seen as the goal of pair work. Information gaps shouldn't be goals, they should be starting points. Pairs may be working together, exchanging information about weather in Osaka, or train schedules to Sendai, but unless they're going to Osaka or Sendai, the answers really don't matter. Information exchange is useful, but we need to move students on to tasks that include experience, opinion, and reasoning gaps. Crossing these gaps, learners become more involved (see Tomcha, 1998). By adding learners' experiences and opinions to classroom tasks, the learners themselves become the content of the lesson. That brings English into the learners' real context. Interpretation: Yes, information exchanges are important, as starting points, not as goals. Learners should add their own ideas and experiences. What About Grammar?We rarely think of pair work as a time for grammar practice. It's seen more as a fluency-oriented staple of communication. The irony, of course, is that this lack of attention to form means we end up, in practice, relying on the same tired assumptions that fueled the "bad old days" of audiolingualism: Say X enough times and it will somehow stick in your head. Much pair work has structures coming up repeatedly. But we often miss the chance to have students really notice those forms (1). Noticing grammar is very different than the old "learn these rules" approach. While "noticing" as a teaching strategy is new, it is actually a simple, natural technique. You've probably experienced it yourself. If you've ever been told something about foreign language grammar and thought, "Really? I've never heard anyone say it that way," only to go into "the real world" and start hearing it all the time. Yes, you had heard it before. You just never noticed. And now that you're noticing, you're in a position to acquire it. Not that noticing automatically leads to acquisition, but teachers can, "direct learner's attention to particular forms, and noticing forms is an important preliminary to their internalization" (Skehan, 1996, p.28). How do we direct attention? Ellis suggests we "devise information-gap or opinion-gap activities...in a way that gives them a grammatical focus" (1993, p.6). Willis & Willis (1996) propose consciousness raising operations (identification, consolidation, classification, cross-language exploration, reconstruction/deconstruction, etc.). It can be as simple as a quick grammar-focus activity like finding common mistakes related to a grammar point before pair work. Learners do the tasks, and then can continue noticing throughout the exercise. Interpretation: We can increase the benefits of pair work by helping learners to notice grammar. Out on a Limb: Close to the Edge of ChaosThroughout this article, I've been talking about pair work in general. At this point, I'd like to change gears and look at pair work--indeed language learning--from a dramatically different viewpoint. We all know that certain activities are almost foolproof: they work with nearly any group of students, regardless of level, motivation, or other factors. As teachers, we wonder why. In any discipline, change--especially radical change--often comes from unexpected places. When Larsen-Freeman (1997) speculated that Chaos/Complexity Science might inform Second Language Acquisition, she certainly raised a few eyebrows. She wasn't ready, nor am I, to say, "Hey, this is it. Complexity theory answers our questions." But we should look at it. Complexity Science considers randomness. It also looks beyond immediate chaos, trying to discover the underlying organizing principles and patterns. Certainly as a profession, we should consider it, if for no other reason than that language, classes, and our students are each complex systems--unlikely to act and react the way they "should" according to reductionist research. Perhaps Complexity Science can also offer insights into classroom activities. A key concept in Complexity is the edge of chaos--the area between order and the chaotic, a mixture of the two. Cholewinski, Kindt, Kumai, Lewis, & Taylor (1997) contend that systems at the "edge of chaos" exhibit the most interesting behavior, such as information processing and creation. Consider "Find Someone Who...," a classic classroom activity. Sudents have a list of questions (i.e., Have you ever met a famous person? Did you eat breakfast today?). Learners stand and circulate, asking the questions to a partner. When a partner says yes, they write that person's name and move on another partner. Although a full-class activity, it is actually a series of pair interactions. What happens in "Find Someone Who...?" You might talk to person X. Or to person Y. Or to someone else. Randomness. And you might ask question one. Or question seven. Or a different question. Randomness. And that person might say yes. Or she might say no. Randomness. Randomness--but all within the framework and structure of a complex activity. Inherent in the activity are the high levels of (usually personal) data exchange. But this nearly total randomness occurs within the parameters of the activity. Those parameters, called attractors, provide the support and structure for the task. It's a task at the edge of chaos. Perhaps that's what makes it a great activity. Interpretation: Great classroom activities often incorporate randomness and networks of choice. Perhaps we need to better understand the nature of control with support vs. openness with support. InConclusionThere's much more to pair work than two learners exchanging data. As teachers, we need to consider why they are interacting, what it is they are exchanging, how we are making them aware of language, and the very nature of the interaction itself. Who knows? Some of the best learning may, literally, be a bit chaotic.
Note 1. For fresh ideas on grammar teaching, see: M. Celece-Murica, Z. Donyei, & S. Thurrell (1997), Direct approaches in L2 instruction: A turning point in communicative language teaching? TESOL Quarterly, 31, 141-152; and C. Doughty, & J. Williams (1998), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For awareness in teaching pronunciation, see W. Acton (1997), Direct speaking instruction (and the mora-bound, focal-stress blues), The Language Teacher, 21(9), 7-11, 97. Are these some of the first volleys in a new teaching revolution (paradigm shift)? (back)
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