Pair work and group work in the communicative classroom

THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH to language teaching involves the use of language through different communicative tasks. Interaction among learners should be relevant because it provides a basis for language acquisition. Pair work activities give the learners the possibility of communicating, negotiating meaning and keeping conversations through different variety of activities such as reading each other's work or working on a short dialogues or short tasks that allow the learners different opportunities for practising the language. This approach allows the learners work in their own productions and discuss on their own work, depending on the learner's level.

As far as group work is concerned, role play activities as well as different communicative tasks or proyect in which learners work cooperatively as a team, will give them the opportunity to discuss, reflect upon their work as a team, and also share different opinions. Learners need to be motivated enough to carry out differnt communicative tasks. By doing this, it's the teacher's job to select a wide range of activities, select appropriate material, guide students and encouraging contributions in the part of the learners in order to develop a communicative lesson successfully.

(from Learning English in the language classroom, By Tricia Hedge Chapter 2 Question 6 Option a and b)