THE STUDY ON GROUP WORK IMPLEMENTATION IN TEFL BY UKRAINIAN SCHOOL TEACHERS

Abstract

The article reviles the potential of group work as an effective means for mastering EFL. This article aims to outline the definition of group work as methods of teaching notion, toanalyze the advantages of group work for learners and teachers on theoretical level and to contrast them with the results of the practical research on the group work experience inUkrainian school. The basic definition of group work is students working together with a number of other students rather in pairs or as a whole class. Numerous authors emphasize the advantages of group work as it makes learning more meaningful, namely, increase the time and opportunity to use the language and learners motivation; it provides positive affective climate and encourages a friendly relaxed learning environment. Despite the majority of theoretical works on the benefits and effectiveness of group work for EFL acquisition, our research reviles that teachers who work in Ukrainian schools still tend to implement traditional forms of whole class and individual work interaction types instead of group work. The received results logically prove that the prevailing number of teachers (63,5 %) of any experience level see no real benefits in harnessing group work in classroom interaction. They note more disadvantages than advantages in group work, such as noise and fall of discipline, difficulty in controlling and assessing the individual participation in the group work performance, difficulties in organizing and grouping learners. Altogether, the teachers tackle with the lack of methodology knowledgeon group work and experience due to the teacher-oriented approach dominating in teacher training higher schools in Ukraine.