Professional Documents
Culture Documents
seven." There seems, however, to be "no firm research to give an ideal answer to the ideal
combination of students of mixed levels. Teachers have to decide whether they will put strong
students with weak students or whether they will vary the combination of the pairs from class to
class" to fit their needs. (Harmer).
Fifth, what should be done about aggressive and shy students?
Turn taking activities can help students become aware of their behavior. Kippel (1984) offers
activities that help students learn to take turns by having the speaker hold a ball and change it
with each speaker or transferring a ball of string to one another so that the person who controls
the conversation is identified by several lines of strings leading to and from him/her.
EFL teachers overseas wishing to incorporate collaborative methods often face difficulties when
working in environments where teacher centered classrooms are the norm. Hopefully this
information can help during dialogues with administrators who have questions.