Group Work for Stress-Free Environment for Effective Language Learning and Acquisition - An Experimental Study

Abstract

Group work is a general teaching-learning strategy where students work together in face-to-face interaction, with the teacher as a facilitator, to achieve a common goal. Language competency develops best in a stress-free, friendly, low-anxiety environment. Through fruitful discussions, students can personalise this knowledge, strengthen their thinking processes, and mould their language ability. This study examined whether group work enhances students' English language dexterity in a stress-free environment. The problem this study addresses is why students show inability and hesitation in language skills, especially when they feel insecure communicating in English, even though they have been learning the language for more than a decade; besides, they show little interest in learning the language. This study was conducted by selecting sixty undergraduates from the Faculty of Business Studies, Vavuniya Campus. Students were divided into twelve groups of five. They completed a series of individual and group work activities throughout the semester, and their performance was measured by pre-test and post-test scores; continuous observations and open-ended questionnaires were administered to elicit respondents' opinions. The collected data were analysed using descriptive statistics. After analysing the test scores, the study found significant improvement among students after implementing systematic group activities rather than individual or whole-class activities. The findings showed a higher mean value of 40.31 for group learning performance than the individual learning (29.6). The findings recommend implementing collaborative learning; teachers should avoid traditional language-teaching practices and conventional classroom setups to build language-learning competency.