Teaching Tips

The cooperating arrangement is the most common kind of group work. Its essential feature is that all learners have equal access to the same information and have equal access to each other’s view of it. This is because the purpose of a cooperating activity is for learners to share their understanding of the solutions to the task or of the material involved. Here is an example:
The learners are shown a picture and have several questions to answer about it, such as: If you had to write a one-word title for this picture, what would it be? What happened before the event in this picture? What are the characters’ feelings towards each other? The learners discuss their answers to the questions.
The best seating arrangement for the members of the group is to sit in a horseshoe with the material in the open end of the horseshoe, or in a circle if there is no material to look at. Similarly, in a pair the learners should sit facing the same direction with the material in front of them. As much as possible, all the learners in a group should be the same distance from the material and the same distance from each other. If the information is a text or a picture, then it is best not to give each learner a copy, because this would encourage individual rather than cooperative activity.
Cooperating requires some degree of equality between learners, particularly a rough equality of skill. Research shows that group performance is often inferior to the best individual’s performance if there is an exceptional individual in the group. Thus, for cooperating activities it is best to put exceptional learners in one group rather than to spread them across groups. The considerable amount of research on cooperating activities with native speakers shows the good effects that such work has on improving social relationships among learners, including learners from different ethnic backgrounds. The most suitable tasks for cooperating-arrangement group work include:
1. ranking, ordering, choosing, e. g., choosing the best candidate for a job, ranking a list of items needed for survival or a list of actions open to you;
2. finding implications, causes, or uses, e. g., brainstorming the uses of a paper clip on a desert island, interpreting a picture;
3. solving problems, e. g., answering letters, solving logical puzzles, simulations;
4. producing material, e. g., making a radio program, preparing for a debate or play.
The major problem with cooperating arrangements is encouraging each learner to play an active part in the group. Because all learners have equal access to the same information, no individual is essential to the activity as occurs in the combining arrangement. Various stratagems have been used to deal with nonparticipation. One way is to introduce elements of the combining arrangement by giving each learner in the group a different job to do. For example, one acts as the secretary to keep a record of decisions. One has the job of encouraging each learner to offer an opinion. One controls the various steps in the discussion procedure. Another way is to have a reward structure that gives the group responsibility for each individual’s learning by rewarding the winning group rather than any individual in the group. A third way to deal with non-participation is to change group size or the people in the groups to provide the optimum climate in each group for participation to occur.