1. The increased participant
If there are have, five or six groups then there will be five or six times the amount of talking. Class discussions, as has been pointed cut, are very
wasteful in terms of the ratio of teacher or student-effort and time to actual language practice taking place; group discussions are relatively efficient.
Moreover, this heightened participation is not limited to those who are usually articulate anyway; students, who are shy of saying something in front of the
whole class, or to the teacher, often find it much easier to express themselves in front of a small group of their peers.
2. Improve the participants‘ motivation
The physical focus of the discussion is close and directed towards the individual student; that is to say, whoever is speaking is only a small distance
away, clearly audible, facing the others and addressing them personally. Any visual or other materials are likewise close by; the whole activity is
immediate and ‗involving‘. More important, group-work lends itself to game- like activities. Where this is not supplied by the task itself, the simple
institution of an arbitrary time limit or inter-group competition can easily do so.
3. Change the teacher‘s task
Group-work frees the teacher from the usual role of instructor-corrector- controller, and allows teacher to wander freely round the class, giving help
where needed, assessing the performance of individual students, noting language mistakes for future remedial work, devoting a little more time to
slower learners. Teacher also has an important role to play in leading and encouraging discussions.
4. There is scope for peer-teaching
In the course of group discussion, students will learn from each other, whether consciously or unconsciously. They may correct each other‘s
mistakes, help with a needed word; and of course, they will teach each other some non-linguistic material as well, through the content of the discussion.
2. Disadvantages of Group Work
There are also some disadvantages of using group work as a technique in teaching a foreign language, they are as follows:
1. It is likely to be noisy
Some teachers feel that they lose control, and the whole-class feeling that has been painstakingly built up may dissipate when the class is split into smaller
entities. 2.
Not all students enjoy Not all students enjoy it since they would prefer to be focus of the teacher‘s
attention rather than working with their peers. Sometimes students find themselves in uncongenial groups and wish they could be somewhere else.
3. Individuals may fall into group roles that become fossilized, so that some are
passive whereas others may dominate. 4.
Groups can take longer to organize than pairs; beginning and ending group work activities especially where people move around the class can take time
and be chaotic.
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D. The Previous Study
The first previous study is conducted by Wahyuning Pratiwi entitled “Developing Students‟ Reading Comprehension of Descriptive Text Through
Group Work” A Classroom Action Research in the First Year of VIII- 1 Class of
MTSN 19 Pinang Kalijati. The findings of this study were: 1 related to the test result, there was 17.9
9 improvement of students‘ mean reading score after using
36
Jeremy Harmer, op.cit., p. 117 —118.
group work method; it gained from the result of test before CAR, there were six students who passed theMinimum Mastery Criterion-Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimal
KKM. Then in the result of test after CAR in the cycle 1, there were 30 or 65.21 students in the class who passed the KKM considering their mean score
of the test is 64.34. Next in the result of test after CAR in the cycle 2, there were 37or 80.43 students who passed the KKM in which their mean score of reading
test derived 73.04. 2 related to the observation result showed that the students were more active and interested in learning reading activity in the classroom.
Indeed, they could cooperate with their group. 3 Related to the interview result, it could be known that the students‘ reading comprehension of descriptive text had
improved and helped the teacher in finding the appropriate strategy in teaching reading descriptive text.
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The second previous study is conducted by Umiyati entitled “The
Effectiveness of Using Small Group Interaction in Teaching Reading Comprehension” Experimental Study at the Seventh Grade of „SMP Sunan
Bonang‟ Tangerang. This is an experimental research. The writer taught two
different classes employing two different teaching techniques. The writer administered a pre-test to know that the classes have relatively the same
background knowledge in the research variable and a post-test to find out the growth of score as the measurement of achievement. The writer used t test to
calculate the data and to test the hypotheses. The result of the calculation from this research is to ≥ t table, it means that the Null Hypothesis Ho is rejected and the
Alternative Hypothesis Ha is accepted. The interpretation of data is the use of
37
Wahyuning Pratiwi, Developing Students‟ Reading Comprehension of Descriptive Text
Through Group Work A Classroom Action Research in the First Year of VIII- 1 Class of MTSN 19 Pinang Kalijati, Jakarta: State Islamic University of Jakarta, 2010.
