Group-work function in cooperative power skills’ forming

«The one who thinks over his experience most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other,
will be the one with the best memory»
William James, 1842-1910, American philosopher and psychologist

«I know this world is ruled by Infinite Intelligence. It requires Infinite Intelligence to create it and it requires Infinite Intelligence to keep it on its course. Everything that surrounds us – everything that exists – proves that there are Infinite Laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision»
Thomas A. Edison

«A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns»
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882-1945, 32nd US president

«Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk,
but he hates to standalone in his opinion»
George Santayana, 1863-1952, Spanish-American poet and philosopher

«He who thinks everything must be in bloom when the strawberries are in bloom doesn’t know anything about apples»
Greek proverb

When we say about group work we mean a lot about organization and methodical following the educational and upbringing process as a strong unit of cooperation teachers and students. First of all, we take into account the very tasks, aims, goals and expectations of planned high result of intellectual and emotional communication of those taught and learned. It means to involve in the teaching process a variety of different activities and techniques. It is very important for building the constructive scheme of communication and fulfill it motivating instruments for students which can help them to learn successfully and enjoy their knowledge. One more very meaningful thing is to encourage teachers to think of long-term aims in their teaching [1, p.169]. Planning help teachers to organize collective group-work, taking into account difference having place among the students in accordance to learning in different ways. So, the students must have techniques of understanding that suits them. That is why the teachers must take into account, that some students learn best by actively speaking, some by repetition, some by learning grammar, some learn best by listening. The main task always is to keep students interested in learning. It becomes possible if teacher offers something different every day. It means It includes a variety of activities and techniques. is necessary to know exactly what are the global aims and periodical tasks of the learning process as a whole in order to define all detail of the teaching and learning activities. When we say about the process as a whole, we mean the teaching techniques as a prolonged process of explaining material and testing students from the earlier units to the logically next ones being integrated into a general lesson plan and all plans as a good teaching tradition. All developed ideas will show evident result of the lesson’s quality, producing it as well-prepared. Pedagogical experiment presented a detailed report about the most effective teachers’ testing materials. Detailed analysis let us describe and recognize the most significant positions of teacher’s attention to the preliminary preparation process of qualified teaching. They are:

• What is the general aim of the whole series of lessons;
• What are the main language areas which are taught in the lessons;
• How much variety is there in the lessons;
• Is language always presented in the same way;
• Do reading texts always have the same kind of questions;
• Does each lesson contain the same kind of activity [2, p.270].

Process of communication proposes small group instructions should be cleared for the process itself if useful and productive. It is discussing what our students are like and what are their expectation. It is rather interesting to pay attention to some of them in order to analyze:

• What are student expectations about the amount and nature of work to be done in and outside of class;
• What days are your weekend. What are expectations about working over a weekend;
• What are student expectations regarding the frequency, difficulty, and length of learning materials proposed;
• How much guidance do students expect to be provided for gotten material;
• What are student expectations about teacher’s availability;
• How much and what kind of experience do students have with group work;
• How do teacher and students perceive due dates (absolute, flexible, subject to change); How will this impact cross-course assignment;
• Are students comfortable using video conferencing, blogs, document sharing tools, etс.;
• What is your student’s comfort level communicating in English (orally and in writing).

When we discuss power relationships, we mean examining the kind of power dynamics and inbalances relationships can slip into and how to change to “power with” instead of “power over”, taking into account personal power- what makes each of us- here teachers and students- powerful persons [3, p.69].

We proposed our students to answer the questions concerning their understanding the term “power”. It appeared to be very interesting and useful to discuss it in order to make a right decision concerning the very definition “co-operative power”. They looked like these ones:

• What does power mean to you;
• What role does power play in your life;
• Who has power over you;
• Who do you have power over;
• Around whom do you feel powerful;
• What makes you feel powerful’
• Around whom do you feel powerless;
• How do you diminish your power.

The answers demonstrated clearly, what did power mean in personal relationships as ability to have what someone want, including position, the ability to give or withhold what others want, personal qualities and relevant expertise and information.

The teachers take into account caring about the relationship in cooperation be friendly, knowing much about the matter of the process, respecting of authority in the hierarchy of relationships, trusting teachers’ advice because they know more about the educational process as the matter.

«Being behaved» means be able to learn to communicate in order to overcome misunderstanding, to build approaches, clear and correct items of activity [4, p.351].

Upbringing values influence greatly the process of learning as a whole and teaching English especially, flowing through minds of people, supporting the ideas of international cooperation of teachers in approaching to qualified learning with the help of happy parenting skills and habits’ using.

For making a lesson productive the teachers take into account workbook activity as one of the most effective in the whole practice. Learning activity includes: listening to a text, answering questions on the text, reading aloud, silent reading, repetition drills, substitution drills, question-answer practice (whole group), oral practice in pairs, guessing games, copying words (sentences), dictation, paragraph writing, role play, free discussion of a topic, correcting each other’s written work.

Teaching techniques to use may be different accordingly to the aims of the concrete lessons. Let us mention some of them, proving their effectiveness and rational results.

The very idea of introducing two different ways of using a reading text is not a newest one, but effective and understandable for all students. They are: introducing the text with a short discussion of the topic; giving a guiding question; reading the text; students’ listening while reading, then answering the question; presenting new words, using examples in English; asking a series of questions on the text with students ‘ giving short answers; asking a few personal questions based on the text; reading out a vocabulary list from the book when students repeat in chorus; reading the text aloud sentence by sentence, when students repeat; student read the text aloud round the class; asking questions from the book and giving the answers, when students repeat in chorus; asking the same questions again, answering round the class.

Learning English as the part of educational process as a whole means not less than Le Education and Upbringing in close connection for personal sustainability- the sphere, where common tasks meet. It is the sphere of forming and testing group work function in cooperative power skills’ forming. It is as a Case-study method in a role-play, when the students were supposed to propose the titles of short speech on the topic and discuss them from the position of common sense and relevant demand in pedagogical experiment. One they had their purposes clearly in mind, they should start speaking and writing. A great attention was paid to Introduction of the students’ speeches, because it gave teachers as examiners their first impression of the students speaking and writing abilities. One of the most important things the students needed to do in their introduction was to define what they understood by the task. The teachers stated how the students intended to approach it, think about a final point.

Let us come back again to reminding having mentioned already: our educational sphere needs renewing in accordance with demands of the modern education expectations, so, the teaching process needs very effective tools, means and methods of communication for fruitful understanding and forming the comfortable sphere of group work positive result in cooperative power skills’ forming. In a real practice it means the TAO’s wisdom, proved its wisdom in practice, by practice, for fruitful practice: “We consider to be right. It means the core can be seen.” And, as a resume: “Learn to lead in a nourishing manner. Learn to lead without being possessive. Learn to do helpful without taking the credit. Learn to lead without coercion”. And that is the very what power skills are alive and in demand. Forever.