9 A slight different answer was given by Participant 4, although she also think that group work
is something that must be done together, she focused her explanation more on the ability of students and the number of students involved during group work.
Group work is an activity where group is formed by the teacher without considering the ability from certain student in some subject. An important point is students can
work together with their friends and they can help one another. And it is more than 2 people, if it’s only 2 than it is pair work. Participant 4
From her explanation, she thought that the ability of students in certain subject may not be an important part in group work, since in group work students worked together, and
they can help one another in doing assignment. She believed that the process of doing group work is far more important than the product itself, since in group work student will work
collaborative and cooperatively to solve a problem. From the three answers about the meaning of group work and some view about group
work above, it may be concluded that the participants believed that group work is an activity that are done together to finish an assignment or project, in which students can exchange their
ideas and help one another to get a better result. This view is supported by Porter 2006 who suggested that group work is where students are divided into small groups to learn
knowledge, to explore or discuss an assigned topic, complete projects and group assignments, or to participate in an exchange of ideas, and share some insights with other group members.
Another view from Brown 2008 sees group work as learning that occurs as a result of interaction between peers engaged in the completion of a common task. Attention is on what
students can do to initiate and manage their own learning through collaboration with others. When it comes to Translation class, which becomes the focus of this study, the
interviewee stated that the meaning of group work is still similar to the group work which they did in general classes. Since basically in Translation class or in general classes, the
10 objective of doing group work is still the same, which is to encourage students to work
together with their friends to solve problems or to finish assignment in which they shared their view and ideas to be discussed together.
B. Effects of group work
This part will discuss about the effects of group work assignments. As students, all of the interviewee had had an experience doing group work to finish their assignments or projects,
and some of them found that group work gave them many advantages. When I am doing group work, there will be a lot of ideas from my friends, there are
many inputs, and so what we need to do is combining those ideas into one final idea from the group Participant 2
Doing group work can reduce the amount of things I need to do, something that is usually done by myself can be done together with friends Participant 5
From the two statements above, we can suggest that because group work are done together, they can get many new inputs from the other group members and this is useful if they found
difficulties in doing some assignment. As Participant 5 explained during the interview, he stated that sometimes his friends in the group can give solution and answers that he had not
thought before, and if he got stuck to do something, there will be others who will help him. And of course, inside their group they can divide the job, which make the project or
assignment less difficult to do and for some cases, it will help them finish their work faster Most of students shared their experiences that they got not only from general classes
but also in Translation class. In Translation class, students were asked to do different translation assignment to check their translation competence. And sometimes, when it is done
in group, students will divide the assignment to the members of the group and usually students will divide it by paragraph, which means that one student will finish one paragraph
11 and later all works will be combined into one. This method is done by students so that their
translation assignment will finish faster. Another advantage from the group work shared by students is given by Participant 4
If each group members have known each other well and they have same understanding about their responsibility in doing assignment, it will give advantages
for group work; the assignment will finish faster or on time. Participant 4 From Students E answer we can see that the connection among the group members inside the
group will play an important role. If they had already known one another, it will be really useful for the group work activities. Some students stated that they only see the advantages of
group work if they work with “connected friends”. As suggested by Participant 3 In my experience, if I work with friends who are “connect” with me, it will give a lot
of advantages for me. But if I work with random friends whom I don’t really know, sometimes the work will take much time and maybe doesn’t have a good result. If we
are not really connected, our heart and brain won’t work well as one group. We need to adapt with other group members. But if I work with friends whom I have known
well, the advantage is they have known my capabilities and they will help if found difficulties.
Participant 3 Here is another opinion shared by Participant 6 in relation with how the connection between
group members is really important in her group work activities if we combined many brains from all of the group members, the result will be better,
but it also has disadvantages, if we work with friends who are not “right”, group work will take much time than doing it individually and inside the group we have to
12 combine some thoughts into one, and that become a challenge in doing group work
Participant 6 By looking at the statement given by some students above, we can see that interaction
among students student inside the group had been concerned by some students who took Indonesian to English classes. When students worked with friends whom they are not
accustomed to work with, they felt that actually it gives negative impacts. The impact may varied from difficulties in working together, longer time needed to finish a task and
challenges in combining ideas. Furthermore, this will probably lead to what is defined by Morris an
d Hayes 1997 as “the free-rider problem” in group work activities. It has been defined as follows: “The problem of the non-performing group member who reaps the
benefits of the accomplishments of the remaining group members with little or no cost to himh
erself‟‟. In this “free-rider” problem, students will rely on “smarter” student to finish the assignment in group and heshe decide not to participate in the discussion, but still later
they get the mark or grade based on their group performance . This problem was experienced by some interviewees, who stated that
“The problems may arise when we work with friends who are passive, which mean, in their mind they thought, this is a group work and there are more capable friends, and
because they are more capable they should be the one who finished it, they rely on others.”
Participant 3 “…in a group maybe there will be student who is too lazy to finish hisher work. It’s
difficult for us too, because if we don’t engage him in the group, we’ll feel bad, since it’s a group work. So then, we decide to do our worktask. The one who are too lazy need to follow
the others “Participant 7
