Teaching through Peer Interaction

Rebecca Adams, Rhonda Oliver

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138069473
• eBook ISBN: 9781351631372
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Linguistica

Teaching through Peer Interaction prepares teachers to use peer communication in the classroom. It presents current research of peer interaction and language learning for teachers, including background on the role of peer interaction in classroom language learning, guidelines for adopting and adapting peer interaction opportunities in real classrooms, and perspectives on teachers' frequently expressed concerns and questions about peer interaction.

Practical and comprehensive, this text brings together information on peer communication across the different skill areas, for different learners, in different contexts, and includes discussion on assessment. The text is replete with sample activities, tasks, and instructional sequences to aid teachers' understanding of how to use peer interaction effectively in a range of classroom settings, making it the ideal textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in language education programs, as well as in-service teachers.

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Peer Interaction and Language Learning

How Does Peer Interaction Occur in Classrooms?

If you have been teaching for a while, you have probably used peer interaction in a number of ways in your classroom. Peer interaction occurs in diverse forms, and each interaction can differ in many ways.

Reflection Question: Peer interaction takes many forms in language classrooms. What do you think of when you think of peer interaction? Brainstorm as many possibilities as you can.

Peer interactions come in lots of forms. They can differ in terms of:

•Pair vs group.

•Oral vs oral and written.

•Focus on meaning vs focus on language form.

•Face to face vs online.

•Adults vs children vs adolescents.

•Language classrooms vs mainstream.

Can you think of other ways they might differ?

Peer interaction takes place anytime students work together on language learning tasks. This broad definition covers a wide range of classroom activities. We tend to imagine peer interaction in a language classroom as two learners talking together, perhaps engaged in a game, or sitting across from each other at a table working on a spot the difference activity, or working together to fill in answers on a worksheet, or doing a role-play such as ordering at a restaurant, or doing an interview. But these are just a few ways peer interactions happen. Peer interaction can be a pair of students or a small or large group (we’ll look at pair vs group work in chapter 8). Peer interaction can also be two learners sitting next to each other at a computer, collaboratively writing an essay or a story. It can be learners reading a text together, taking turns reading aloud and discussing questions to improve their comprehension (we’ll look at peer interactions for second language reading and writing in chapter 5).

There is also a tendency to associate peer interaction with natural approaches to language learning, where learners focus fully on communicating meaning and where the language form is not the focus. It is certainly true that many peer interactions have as their primary focus meaning making. However, there are also many types of activities in which grammar is a primary focus. These range from working with a peer on a grammar worksheet to using grammar as the topic of a meaning-focused discussion (Fotos, 1994).

Peer interaction can happen in a classroom or from any place around the world. Through the internet interactions between language learners can happen with learners in a different school or different country. Technology has opened up the ability of leaners to communicate with peers through online chatting, discussion forums, collaborative wikis, and videoconferencing. We will discuss the ways that technology is shaping peer interaction in language learning in chapter 6. Peer interactions can be beneficial whether we are teaching children, adolescents, or adults (we also discuss age differences in more detail in chapter 2 and in chapter 8). That’s not to say that interactions are the same across ages. You need to think about very different factors when helping learners of different ages to interact in positive ways.

Finally, it’s natural for language teachers and language teacher educators (like the authors of this book) to think of peer interaction as something that takes place in language classrooms – classes where English-speaking children learn French or German, or in sheltered ESL classes where immigrant children to Australia or New Zealand work on their English to be able to move on to mainstream classes (again a topic we describe in chapter 2). However, interactions between second language peers also occur in mainstream classrooms, because immigrant children mainstream when they are able to communicate orally, but often before they have acquired the academic English proficiency that they’ll need to be successful in a mainstream classroom. This means that some students in mainstream classrooms still struggle with language. Depending on the nature of the activity they are engaged in, teachers can either pair second language speakers with native speaker students to support their work, or let them work through content activities with a second language peer who may work at a similar pace. While this book is primarily targeted to specialist language teachers, many of the ideas discussed are also relevant for mainstream teachers who have language minority students in their classrooms.

Challenges of Teaching Through Peer Interaction

Peer interactions can take different forms in the classroom, and the teaching decisions we make as we provide students with opportunities to interact can impact the ways that learners interact together in a classroom and what they gain from this experience. The purpose of this book is to explore these questions, and to give you research-based advice on using peer interactions effectively in your language teaching. To start, consider your own experiences as a learner or as a teacher. What are your current impressions of peer interaction, and how were they formed?

Reflection Question: Most teachers of language learners have tried grouping students in their classrooms for communicative language practice, but not necessarily with the same results. Read the following two descriptions of peer interaction in second language classrooms. Have you had similar experiences in your teaching and learning? What advice would you give these teachers?

Scene 1: Intensive English Program

The setting is an intermediate level grammar-oriented course that forms part of an intensive ESL program in an American university. The multicultural class of young adults is working through a session on the present perfect tense. Their course is based on a popular ESL textbook designed to incorporate interaction and communication into formal English learning. The teacher has provided an explanation about the meaning of the present perfect tense, how it is formed, and how it is used in English communication. She has led the class through a series of controlled exercises allowing them to practice forming and using the present perfect. Then, following the textbook suggestion, she forms her class into pairs and asks them to discuss and together answer a list of questions about things they have done (e.g., “What is the most interesting place you have visited?”). This is designed to be a natural context for the use of the present perfect.

The students move around to work with their peers and begin the activity. Immediately, things begin to go badly. The students generate quite a bit of noise, and with the thin walls between classrooms, the next-door teacher is soon over to complain. While trying to remind the students to keep the noise down, the teacher notices that many of the groups have finished the task quickly, without much discussion at all. When she queries them, she realizes that they have gone through the questions and given quick short phrasal answers and moved on, rather than discussing the prompts together (e.g., Question: “What is the best meal you have ever eaten?”; Answer: “My grandmother’s empanadas.”). Because other groups are still discussing answers, the teacher instructs those groups who have finished quickly to quietly practice making general conversation. Very soon, pairs have rearranged themselves to sit near peers that share their first language and conversations in Spanish, Mandarin, and Korean begin in the classroom. To the teacher’s dismay one discussion about favorite soccer teams becomes quite heated and threatens to become physical.

In the midst of the chaos, she has little opportunity to work with the other pairs of students who are still engaged in the activity. Many of these pairs have taken the instruction to discuss the prompts and share experiences to heart and are discussing their experiences enthusiastically in response to the questions. However, when she is able to listen to them, the instructor realizes that none of them are using the target form. Rather, they speak generally in present tense (e.g., Question: “What is the best movie you’ve ever seen?” Answer: “I really like Terminator 2”) or simply speak in phrases, avoiding verbs altogether. The teacher intervenes in several of the groups, reminding them to practice the target tense, but it seems to have little effect on how they express themselves.

The bell chimes and the students pack up their bags to go. The teacher lingers a minute to gather up supplies and rearrange the chairs for the next class. As she walks away, she wonders whether there is any point in having the students interact in pairs and small groups. Between students being disengaged and students not using the target form, she struggles to see how this could possibly be beneficial. She thinks back to the discussions in her ESL teacher education courses on the importance of small group discussion for language learning and considers the possibility that all the ESL experts whose books she read are simply wrong.

Scene 2: Sheltered Instruction Classroom

This setting is an ESL sheltered instruction classroom in a small American junior high. The students range in age from twelve to fourteen and have all immigrated to the United States in the past year. Most converse in English reasonably well but have trouble understanding the teaching in mainstream classrooms. They meet in the ESL classroom daily for two hours for lessons on science and history designed to allow them to progress both in learning grade level content and in improving their English skills. They also have a separate “in classroom” teacher aid who helps them with English reading and writing.

The class is starting a unit on the topic, “the water cycle”. The teacher gives a short presentation on water, including brainstorming with the whole class about the various forms that water takes in nature (e.g., lakes, rivers, rain) and asks them to think about how these forms of water are connected. The students are then given a list of questions about water that they preview as a class next they watch a short video explaining the water cycle. Following the video, they work in pairs to answer the questions they were given previously. After their first attempt, they re-watch the video to check their answers and discuss any details they missed. At this point, the teacher brings the class back together to discuss the answers to the questions and to discuss the meanings of specialized vocabulary words (e.g., “condensation”, “evaporation”, “gravity”) explained in the video and on the worksheet.

The class works together to set up a demonstration of the water cycle in an aquarium, using a clay mountain, water, ice cubes, and a heat lamp to demonstrate evaporation and condensation. As they set up the experiment, the teacher repeats key vocabulary, helping students connect what they are seeing to the terminology introduced earlier. As they watch the demonstration unfold, students are encouraged to discuss what they are seeing with their partner and to collaboratively jot down notes about the experience. Finally, they engage in peer writing. The students are asked to work together to draw a picture of the water cycle at the top of a large piece of paper. They use the space below to write the story of what happens to a drop of water, starting in the ocean.

During the peer interactions embedded in this lesson the teacher carefully observes her students. In the first stage, as students work in pairs to answers questions from the video, she notes that most students are engaged in the task, but struggling with vocabulary. She uses this information to focus her instruction when they discuss the questions as a class. She also notes that in some pairs one student has taken over answering questions without discussing these with their partners. She spends a minute with those groups, asking them supporting questions and checking the understanding of the quieter students. In one group, the more passive student responds to some of her questions and a discussion is sparked between the pair. In the other, she requests that the quieter student takes over control of the pen and paper to record their answers. As the students write they begin to ask clarifying questions of each other and they also discuss the vocabulary they are using.

During the second phase, as the students watch and discuss the experiment, the teacher notices some pairs sitting quietly, unsure of what to say. She brings their attention back to their list of answered questions, and prompts them to discuss how the terms on the sheet are being represented in the experiment. Another group has begun speaking in their first language – Mandarin. The teacher checks with them and discovers that one student is explaining the science to the other through their first language. She allows the conversation to continue, but reminds them to refer back to their sheet so that they can make connections to the English words as well. Another group, although nearly finished, has gone off topic and she moves them into the next phase of the activity.

The final peer interaction phase involves collaboratively drawing and writing. The teacher notes several pairs switching between their first language and English as they figure out how to express the concepts in writing...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• 1 Peer Interaction and Language Learning
• 2 Why Use Peer Interaction in the Language Classroom?
• 3 How Does Language Learning Happen in Peer Interaction?
• 4 Peer Interaction for Speaking and Listening
• 5 Peer Interaction for Reading and Writing
• 6 Peer Interaction and the Future of Language Teaching
• 7 The Teacher’s Role in Peer Interaction
• 8 Teacher Concerns with Peer Interaction
• 9 Guidelines for Implementing Peer Interaction
• References
• Index