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TKT Core Module 3: Teachers' and learners' language in the classroom
Grouping learners

grouping

Grouping learners is a key planning and management skill.  It can be overdone and some learners feel it gets tedious so handle with some care.

keys

Key concepts in this guide

By the end of this guide, you should be able to understand and use these key concepts:

  • why group learners?
  • matching grouping to task type: collaborative vs. confrontational tasks
  • types of group and types of task
    • pairs
    • threes
    • fours
    • mingle
    • discussion
  • task types for group work
    • speaking
    • writing
    • structure / lexis
    • listening
  • the teacher's role
  • setting up groups

Look out for these words like this in the text.
There will be tests at the end of the guide for you to check that you understand the ideas.


group

Why group learners at all?

There are a number of advantages to grouping students at various times in most lessons.  They include:


Matching grouping to task type

Consider these 10 arrangements of learners and try to say what could be happening in each arrangement.

Click on each image for an answer.

1 4
2  3
5 6
7  8
9 10

There is more on this in a guide on this site to classroom arrangement.  Here we are concerned with the reasons for choosing between possible arrangements.

The fundamental distinction is between

It's a simple process to classify all the arrangements in the diagrams above.  Try it.


pair

Group- / pair-work tasks

Here's an (incomplete) list of the sorts of tasks often (not always) best done in pairs or groups.

speaking tasks
role plays (social setting, commercial transactions, advice giving etc.)
interviews (tell me about, tell me what you think about etc.)
discussions (in groups of more than two, probably)
pair work in threes (two learners talk, the third listens and takes note of uses of the target items, ways of taking turns / giving feedback to each other etc.)
writing tasks
constructing a dialogue using target items
planning a piece of writing by brainstorming things to say and the order in which to write them
writing lists and prioritising lists
structural / lexical tasks
noting differences in meaning between sentences with different structures
gap fills
sentence completion tasks
lexis matching tasks (item to picture, item to definition etc.)
reading tasks
reading two different parts of a text each and then exchanging the ideas and facts
reading information and making collaborative decisions about choices (holiday brochures, course descriptions, entertainment guides etc.)
reading part of a story and speculating about what happens next before reading the next part to see if the guesses were correct
listening tasks
listening to a song / piece of music and comparing reactions
listening to an announcement and deciding who in the group it applies to
listening to each other telling a story and giving feedback

When not to group students

Please don't assume from any of this that pair- or group-work is always preferable.  There are times when it is both appropriate and important that the whole class works together or individuals work alone.  For example, if the nature of the activity is to allow individuals to see if they have grasped the target of the lesson and can put it into practice, it's actually inappropriate to carry out the task in groups or pairs.
Silent reading, too, is usually done, authentically, alone, and getting learners to read the same text together is arguably not a useful exercise.
It is for you to decide what you want the activity to achieve and then choose the best way of conducting it.


teacher

The teacher's role

The other consideration here is where you should be and what you should be doing.  Again, there are distinctions


Take the time

time

  1. It is not a waste of time spending some of it making sure that an activity is properly set up and that the groupings are arranged in a way that makes the task easy to achieve.  It's also worth remembering that most people actually like to get up and move around at times.
  2. Be clear in your planning stage how you want people to sit or stand depending on the nature of the activity you have devised.  Add the description into your lesson notes so you don't forget to (re-)arrange the learners and the room accordingly.
  3. Become expert at setting activities up quickly and efficiently so that your learners gain the most benefit and the arrangement does not actually hinder them.  This usually means being slightly assertive (no, not rude) with instructions such as
        Mary, John and Peter.  Please sit here, here and here
    or
        Right.  Everyone.  Move the tables back and come round into the front now, please.
    Do not be vague with 'instructions' such as
        Be sure you can talk easily
    or
        I wonder if you'd like to move over here.
    Those aren't actually instructions at all.

self test

Self-test questions

Before you go on, make sure you can answer these questions.  If you can't, go back to the sections which give you trouble.

If you are happy with your progress, go on.


practice

Tests and practice for TKT

There's only one practice test.

Test 1 A matching task

Now you can return to the Module 3 index: arrow
or go on to the next guide which is to correcting learners.