The Future of Education

This paper aims to provide a way for the speaking problem of Kurdish origin Turkish high school students with the research question of ‘ Does Group Work help my students communicate more in English with their classmates?’. It is essential and advantageous to involve students in a social and communicative context instead of following the same course and workbook everyday. With the help of such interactive activities; students are capable of participating and taking parts more in the class since the topics are interesting and they are more enthusiastic over taking part in this productive process as it contributes to physical activities, creativity, imagination and emotional aspects.

As pre-speaking stage, teacher teaches some lexis, phrasal verbs and  idioms mainly used by the young as the topic is covered. The last stage aims to help students use their productive skills via discussions groups. Each group is consisted with 5 students. These groups are supposed to discuss certain topics given them previously mostly over update issues, such as; discussion for/against ‘money is the main evil’. During this stage, some local music is played in order to create a safe atmosphere.

My students generally feel  reserved and unsafe hence do not feel confident enough to express themselves since they are really afraid of making mistakes interrupted by both Kurdish and Turkish, because nearly all of them are Kurdish origin Turkish students whose native language is Kurdish, and Turkish was learned at primary school belatedly. Sometimes I try to set up the group activities by including myself in my student groups so that they could think I was one of them, not someone watching and finding their mistakes in class.