Language Trainers Blog

There are a number of justifications for the use of small groups in language classrooms. Many of them would be worth recommending, whatever the model of language acquisition or instructions being followed. Small groups provide greater intensity of involvement, so that the quality of language practice is increased, along with the opportunities for feedback and monitoring, given adequate guidance and preparation by the teacher.

The setting is more natural than that of a fuller class, as the size of the group resembles that of normal conversational groupings. Because of this, the stress and anxiety which generally accompanies ‘public’ performance in the classroom should be reduced. Experience also suggests that placing students in small groups assists individualisation, since each group, being limited by its own capacities, can determine its own appropriate level of work far more quickly and effectively than a larger class. Furthermore, co-operation with your peers is ideologically desirable, especially in educational systems which advocate socialist principles.

Because the small group simulates natural conversational settings more closely than any other mode of classroom organisation, it will most effectively combine all aspects of communication, learning, and human interaction referred to in the justifications cited above, in the most integrated, non-threatening, and flexible mode of class organisation available to the teacher.