The use of group work in teaching writing

Writing is a skill that can help us in many areas of \nour life. It helps us observe more of the world, understand \npeople better, and communicate more clearly. Writing is also \nused to succeed in school and on the job. Furthermore, \nwriting, as one of four skills, lends itself to integration \nwith other activities in the classroom, for example reading \nand speaking activities from which a piece of writing involves. \nFor teachers, writing is a means to examine students' \nperformance. And writing is needed for our social \nand personal lives, for instance writing letters, messages, \nnotes, and keeping records. \nUnfortunately, writing is not just a 'natural' extension \nof learning to speak a language. It means if we are \nable to speak a language, it does not mean that we are \nnaturally able to write that language too. We learned to \nspeak our first language at home without systematic instruction, \nwhereas most of us had to be taught in school \nhow to write that same language. Learning and teaching \nwriting in the foreign language is considered a tiring job \nfor both students and teachers. Students are tired to do \nthe writing assignments in which they make a lot of mistakes. \nTeachers are tired of controlling the writing of \ntheir students so they do not practise making errors and of \ntraining them to communicate effectively in English \nTime has changed and so has the focus in the classroom. \nInstead of having teacher as the central attention in \nthe classroom, nowadays, the focus shifts from the teacher \nto the students. Students are given more responsibility for \ntheir own learning. \nLetting students work in groups motivates them as \ngroup work provides an affective climate where students \nfeel less shy and as a result, they participate more \nfreely. Group work make them responsible for their own \nlearning and the learning of others. Students help correct \neach other's mistakes and help out with a needed work. For \nteachers, group work enables them to have more time that \ncan be devoted to help weak students. \nFinally, this thesis is still far from perfect. However, \nit is worth trying to use group work in teaching \nwriting. Hopefully, it will help both writing students become \nbetter writers since they are teachers-to-be and writing \nteachers have less burden.