Promoting Equal Opportunity to Participate in Language Learning

Abstract

Much of the literature on teaching ESOL recommends the use of group activities to promote communication among students. However, these group activities can suffer from difficulties, such as some group members dominating discussions. Students and teachers need to address this, and this article explains ten strategies for promoting equal opportunity to participate among group members. These ten strategies consist of the use of small groups including groups of two members, writing tasks that students do before or after they speak to groupmates, writing tasks that students do without speaking, group members taking turns to speak including the use of timed turns, students playing roles in their groups, tasks that involve a variety of abilities beyond language abilities, the use of talking tokens, creation of information gaps which students need to close to complete a task, observation by students of the equality of participation among their group members, and an emphasis on cooperative skills by group members including the skill of encouraging others to participate.