Use of the Topical Project Work “My Body” for Developing All Language

Pair Work at Project Lessons

Organizing pupils into pairs is an important job for the teacher at the project lesson. In pair work students can practise the language together, study a text, research the language or take part in information-gap activities. They can write dialogues, predict the content of reading texts, or compare on what they have listened to or seen.

The most important advantages and disadvantages of using pair work at project lessons saw S. Haines (1995).

So, the positive sides are:

It dramatically increases the amount of speaking time any one student gets in the class.

It allows students to work and interact independently without the necessary guidance of the teacher, thus promoting learner independence.

It allows teachers time to work with one or two pairs while the other students continue working.

It recognises the old maxim that ‘two heads are better than one’, and in promoting cooperation helps the classroom to become a more relaxed and friendly place. If teachers get students to make decisions in pairs, they will be allowed to share responsibility rather than having to bear the whole weight themselves.

It is relatively quick and easy to organise.

There are disadvantages of pair-work:

Pair-work is frequently very noisy and some teachers and students dislike this. Teachers in particular worry that they will lose control of their class.

Students in pairs can often veer away from the point of an exercise, talking about something else completely, often in their first language.

2.2 Group Work at Project Lessons

It is also possible to put students in large groups too, since this will allow them to do a range of tasks for which pair-work is not sufficient or appropriate. Thus, students can write a group story or role-play a situation which involves five or six people. They can prepare a presentation or discuss an issue and come to a group decision. Students can watch, write or perform a video sequence; teachers can give individual students in a group different lines of a poem which the group has to reassemble.

In general it is possible to say that small groups of around five students provoke greater involvement and participation than large groups. They are small enough for real interpersonal interaction, yet not so small that members are over-reliant upon each individual. Because five is an odd number, it means that a majority view can usually prevail. However, there are occasions when large groups are necessary. The activity may demand it, or we may want to divide the class into teams for some game or preparation phase.

Advantages and disadvantages of using group-work at project lessons are nicely described by J. Reid (1987), and T. Woodward (1995) in their works. The main advantages are:

Unlike pair-work, because there are more than two people in the group, personal relationships are usually less problematic; there is also a greater chance of different opinions and varied contribution than pair-work, and yet is more private than work in front of the whole class.

It promotes learner autonomy by allowing students to make their own decisions in the group without being told what to do by the teacher.

Like pair work, it dramatically increases the amount for individual students.

There are definite disadvantages, too:

It is likely to be noisy. Some teachers feel that they lose control, and the whole-class feeling which has been painstakingly built up may dissipate when the class is split into smaller entities. Groups can take longer to organise than pairs.

In conclusion it should be mentioned that project work is topic-based which involves research/questionnaires project encourage cooperation and sharing, it may be very creative artwork.While project work it is possible to use such forms of class organization as pair and group work. It helps for developing all language skills at the project lessons.