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Glossary

background reading Background reading involves the reading of related works in order to get background (contextual information) on a topic that you are intending to study or write about.

As already stated, lecturers in English-speaking universities believe you will learn more when you work with other students than when you work alone. The following example of a group work assignment will help you to think about whether you agree or not.

For example: Identify a shopping mall in the city and carry out a survey of its customers’ shopping habits.

There will be a number of stages to this assignment. The first stage might be to do some background reading on people’s shopping habits. The information below shows how much you could do if you worked individually compared with working as part of a group.

Stage 1: Find out as much as you can about people’s shopping habits by doing some background reading.

As individual work	As group work
You can read a small number of articles and gain some information.	Each group member can read different articles. Students can then meet and share their information with each other.
Result: You have a small amount of information.	Result: You have a lot of information.

The next stage might be to design a survey and write questions to ask shoppers. As before, this task will be easier to do as part of a group rather than done individually.

Stage 2: Write a list of questions to ask shoppers about their shopping habits.

As individual work	As group work
You write all the questions you can think of.	Each group member writes a list of questions. You then work together to choose the best ones; some students have written good questions you did not think of.
Result: You have a list of all the questions you could think of.	Result: You have a list of the best questions from each student.

The final stage might be to carry out the survey by stopping shoppers in the shopping mall. You can see from the information on page 12 how many shoppers you can ask on your own compared to working in a group.

Stage 3: Carry out a survey of shoppers in a shopping mall.

As individual work	As group work
You ask as many shoppers as you can in the time you have.	You and your group members split up and go to different parts of the shopping mall. You ask as many shoppers as you can in the time available and then share all your information.
Result: You have a small number of respondents.	Result: You have a large number of respondents and your survey will be more representative.

Glossary

available If something you want or need is available, you can find it or obtain it.

representative A group of people or things is representative of a larger group of people or things if it closely matches the wider group.

refine If something such as a process, theory or machine is refined, it is improved by having small changes made to it.

You will have seen from these examples that there are clear advantages to working in groups.

 You learn more when you can share information that you get separately; it takes time to find and read information, but it does not take long to share this information with someone else.

 You learn from the ideas of others; you will have some ideas, but you cannot think of everything on your own. Other students will usually have some ideas you did not think of.

 You will benefit from explaining your ideas and listening to the ideas of other students. They will help you to see things from different points of view and help you to refine your ideas.

Exercise 2

Read the tasks below and make notes about the benefits of group work.

Task	Benefits of doing task in a group
Make a poster explaining the content of your degree programme for a university open day.
Give a presentation entitled The advantages of studying abroad for your degree.
Design a new product to sell at your university shop and persuade the shop manager to stock it.

Now check the key for comments on this exercise.