Advantages Of Group Discussion

Generally, when students finish high school, most of them always continue their studies to universities. They think that they will earn something which is different from what they learned at high school. Of course, during the four-year study at university, they will learn many different subjects and meet many new people from different places and many different lecturers who will share them the skills they want to learn for their future jobs. In sharing the skills to the students, all lecturers will have different techniques in teaching and explaining the lesson to the students. Some lecturers would let their students learn individually, while other would ask the students to work in pairs or to have group discussion, for they find that group discussion will provide their students with several important factors.

The first important factor is that group discussion will help the students build up good relationship among their classmates. Actually, when all the students come to study at the university, some of them know each other well, but some other don’t because they are from different provinces. So group discussion will teach them how to make friends, and how to learn in harmony with other classmates. When all students have good relationship, they will learn with fun and enjoy the classes all the time. And this would help them avoid playing a truant, which can lead them to drop school in some case.

In other word, group discussion will also assist students to learn faster and more effectively. When students are asked to work in group, they will learn faster and their learning is more effective than learning individually. For example, if the teacher assigns one task to a group of students to do, it will be very easy for them to make finish it faster, for their group members will help share the ideas which are useful in order to produce a fruitful result and they will be satisfied with the achievement they get. But if they work individually, it will take longer time to finish and the result might not be as good as they work in group. Through my experience, when I was student, I found it difficult to do the task alone because I sometimes got stuck with the idea which make me feel lazy all the time during class activity.

Finally, group discussion will give a chance to poor students. It’s really important that the teacher know the ability of all the students he is supposed to teach. Because nearly most of the classes are mixed-ability classes which mean some students are good and some other are poor. And usually the poor students are shy and afraid to ask the teacher the points they don’t know. Therefore they will learn nothing from the teacher. But group work will push them learn from their group members. They don’t date to ask questions to the teacher, expectantly they will ask questions to their classmates who will explain them face to face. Their classmates may not be able to explain them clearly, but at learn they learn something which can guide them to understand the lessons later.

In short, group discussion plays such a significant role in learning and teaching process because it helps build up good relationship, give chance to poor students, and push learning and teaching process faster and more effectively. In my opinion, I think that if all the students are asked to work in group during class activity, they will learn faster and enjoy their learning all the time.

By: San Sambor

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Reference :

- Norton University Newsletter, September 2010 / January 2011, Page: 78.