awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.4, 2014Group Work in ESL: A Teacher’s Perception and ApplicationAllhedanperformed Mike Orr group work and to ask them questions. Only a few questions were directed to thestudents in order to keep the flow of group dynamics uninterrupted. These questions concernedwith students’ obvious behaviors, such as non-participation or the use of L1 based on theliterature review on group work.In the follow-up phase of the study, six questions were added to ask the teacher moreabout her general teaching beliefs as she reflected on them from the observed class. A fifteenminutefollow-up interview was conducted for this purpose on Friday, November 30, 2012.As qualitative research, a deductive reasoning approach was adopted to analyze the data.This data analysis progressed through the following stages: (1) transcribing the interview, (2)writing notes, (3) organizing points into general and specific beliefs, (4) looking for theirrepresentatives or counter-representatives from the class observation, (5) interpreting data, and,finally, (6) drawing conclusions. Thus, the relationship between the teacher’s beliefs andpractices were initially categorized according to her beliefs: general beliefs about languageteaching and specific beliefs about using group work in ESL classes. Within each category, welisted the consistencies between the beliefs and practices first, followed by the evidentdiscrepancies.ResultsThis research is concerned with discovering the relationship between an experienced ESLteacher's beliefs and her classroom practices, especially those pertaining to using group work as alearning technique. Analysis of this teacher’s beliefs and practices revealed that most of herbeliefs were parallel to her practices. Nonetheless, some instances of discrepancies wereexposed. In this account, both consistencies and discrepancies are presented within two lines ofanalysis: general beliefs about language teaching and specific beliefs about the use of groupwork.1. The teacher’s general beliefs about language teachingA) Approach to language teachingTeacher’s belief: The teacher believes that the best approach to L2 teaching is the authentic,pragmatic and functional use of language. On the contrary, overt attention to grammar is avoidedin her teaching.I want them to understand the function, not the terminology. I don't expect them to knowthat because that they are not here to learn the grammar. They are here to learn thelanguage and how to use it.Classroom practice: The topics taught in the observed classes manifested authentic themesrelated to students’ life. This elevated the students’ interest. As a result, the discussions in theclass were eminently concerned with the correct usage of the commonly used phrases within thattheme. As such, grammar rules were taught inductively.B) Teaching methodsTeacher’s belief: The teacher is obviously influenced by the lexical approach, as she emphasizedthe importance of lexical phrases, or collocations, which she believes would vastly enhance thestudents’ fluency:Another theory is about collocations. We expect our students to sound fluent, while theycan only sound fluent if they know these collocations.Classroom practice: This approach was evident in the first observation. Students had a task ofpreparing a card for each word from a given list. That card included the meaning of the word asArab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org474