One of the issues discussed in Saint Petersburg was the change in the young generation. In spite of the fact that Russia belongs more to collectivist than individualist culture some recent research of teenagers’ attitudes showed a great shift to highlighting personal interests. They don’t view themselves as members of groups (tribes, nations, work/study units, families) and focus on material rather than spiritual advancement. Can you feel that at your lessons?A couple of years ago in my welcome speech to a new group I mentioned the language acquisition as a highly personal process meaning, “First of all you have to work hard yourself”.I radically changed my view due to reflection on these two examples. One of the first groups I had in the university was of the collectivist type. They didn’t let any member left behind. If somebody had a problem they promise, “S/he will learn it, we can help” and they did it. They were aware and cherished this peculiarity of their group. Almost all the teachers remember this group as the best one and some of its students became our colleagues. 

It was my fifth year at that department when I had a second year students group full of individuals. I remember the lessons as a nightmare, a long-lasting struggle – no home task done, no course book brought, no dictionary opened, no book read. The problem was the leaders, who had better level of English and were ‘hiding’ in the beginners group to avoid any work. Most of them kept coming to the university because they got used to this routine or had nothing else to do. The only thing they were interested in was to do simple tasks for getting minimum score to pass the credit as it gave the right to continue the study. They were having fun and didn’t allow others to study, as standing out of the crowd was inappropriate behavior. I did my best (that was the case I had to experiment with my teaching style) but all efforts failed and as a result in the middle of the year the leaders got their satisfactory C-grades and the weakest students dropped out. I was really sorry for the latter as they were not hopeless in English but easily influenced and unable to make decisions themselves. This loss moved the silent majority and the second half of the year was better.

I often observed the KINSET criterion we had developed for effective lesson implementation – if students feel something non-constructive is going on in class it is them (not the teacher) who state their disagreement with the deviating behaviour. The lesson I learnt was the importance of peer success enhancement and nowadays I try to make students think of the social environment as a crucial thing too. Becoming Independent learners we don’t stop being Interdependent and especially at the lessons. The history has examples when people studied the dictionaries and grammar books but were unable to communicate in real life. One of the purposes of gathering together in class is to provide this opportunity to communicate, to motivate, to be a sympathetic listener, to practice tolerance in cooperation and take pride in what the group has accomplished. In Russian education it is paramount as students stay in the same group all 4-5 years of university study and making friends brightens the time spent together. This year I detect the seeds of the problem in one of the first year groups and I don’t want the sad story happen again. At the lessons we often practice teamwork, peer assessment, whole group feedback though I feel resistance of some students.

What are you doing to “build the team”? Please, share.