If you've ever been in an English classroom in Taiwan, you may
find the following scene familiar. As you walk in, you find the
desks lined up in columns facing the teacher, platform and
blackboard. The teacher is explaining lots of words, phrases,
grammar and sentence structures by lecturing, while the students
are busy filling their books or notebooks with many English and
Chinese words. The class looks awfully neat and disciplined,
doesn't it? However, the teaching effectiveness is really
questionable because it is not very student-centered and
students depend on the teacher all the time, waiting for
instructions such as repeating, reading aloud, translating
sentences, answering perfunctory questions and so on. If we
agree that English is best learnt through communication and
interaction, making students work together in pairs or groups is
one of the best interpersonal approaches in the classroom. Group
work usually means groups of six students or less, with the
optimal number being three or four. As mentio