Teamwork is a life-long learning skill useful at school, university or work. Nevertheless, it might seem rather demanding if agreements must be reached in a language which is not our mother tongue. Below are some ideas on how to promote collaborative learning in a foreign language context from the very first lessons.
Focusing on the goal
It’s important to help our students to identify and work towards an aim. This helps them make sense of the activities that you propose in class, and create a sense of achievement once they have been completed. Teachers can remind students to work towards the objectives together, by stating what they still need to go over and cheering them up along the way!
Checklists
When learning a foreign language, it may be hard to agree or disagree directly. For that reason, it might be a good idea to provide students with checklists for them to reflect on what they have done as a team, instead of doing so by using open philosophical questions. Depending on their level of language proficiency, students can also state why they didn’t achieve the goals.
Assigning roles
One way of organizing group work or project work is to assign duties to the team members. The important thing is that all roles should match the students’ strengths. For example, the student that is most linguistically aware in the group could perform as a monitor of language use or as a proofreader of written work; conversely, students who are very active and lively could act as motivators or presenters.
Evaluating before last hand-in
An important step in group work or project work is to evaluate the product before it is delivered for assessment. Each of the group members should evaluate it and a decision should be made on whether it is ready for submission. This will help students to listen to each other and to approach their self-evaluation from different points of view.
Celebrating reaching the goal!
The task is not finished if the team does not identify what they have just achieved. If they are aware of this, they should celebrate completing the assignment.
All in all, learning a foreign language might also imply integrating soft skills such as teamwork, but teachers are the ones who can make this possible by designing activities that allow their students gain the most from building knowledge together.
