Group Work in the Secondary ESL Classroom

This study involves a survey on student’s perceptions on whether group work is enjoyable, interesting, promotes interaction and an effective mechanism of learning. It further investigated if gender and performance in English had any bearing on group work. The instrument used consisted of four sections. Section A is for the descriptive data, while section B, C and D use a Likert scale where ‘5’ was the most positive answers. The sample of 70 respondents was randomly chosen from a semi urban school in the East Coast state of Terengganu. There were 27 males and 43 females and all of them were 16-year-old Malay Form Four students. The findings indicated that the students found group work to be enjoyable, interesting and promoted interaction. They also perceived it to be an effective means of learning. Through comparison of means and t-testing, it was established that there was no significant different between the genders in their inclination towards group work. Co-relational analysis indicated that there was no significant relationship between the students English language performance in their keenness towards group work. For future research, the study should be conducted in a longer period and in experiential way.