Group work activities in the ESL classroom : a survey among the form four students / Uzah Alwee

This study involved a survey on students’ perceptions of 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 and 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.