Benefits and Weakness Between Group and Individual Work

In world of teaching and learning there is interaction between students to students. We call this interaction as interaction pattern.

There are two interaction patterns in teaching and learning. They are group-work/pair-work and individual work. Group-work/pair-work is an interaction pattern where learners work with their partners to learn something. Meanwhile, individual work is an interaction pattern placing learners to do a task individually.

The two patterns have several benefits and weakness. What are they?

Group-work/pair-work

The benefits:

• Learners can accomplish a task quickly because they work together.
• Weak learners can be helped by strong learners to do a task.
• It's easy for teacher to control the class.

The weakness:

• Some learners may be dominant in group.
• Some learners may not be involved.
• Some individual learners may feel strained during the process of learning.

Individual work

The benefits:

• Learners are able to talk and express their idea freely.
• Teacher is easy to identify the students ability.

The weakness:

• Weak learners may get strained and anxious during the learning process.
• It takes too long to accomplish a task because of different ability and skills.
• It's too difficult to control the class.