Article info.

ABSTRACT

Received 23 Aug 2016
Revised 20 Sep 2016

Accepted 29 Jul 2017

Group work has been largely used as an effective teaching strategy in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom contexts to develop students’ communicative proficiency in English. Although several studies on group work examined EFL teaching at universities in Vietnam and in the world, the question as to what factors influence EFL students’ group work in classroom in the Mekong Delta remains unanswered.  This paper, therefore, based on a case study at a university in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, is aimed to explore the factors that influence EFL students’ group work in classroom contexts as well as the difficulties students encountered in group work activities. The data were collected from the questionnaire surveys and interviews; 272 first-year students participated in the study. The findings showed that four factors influencing students’ group work in class include classroom context, student interactions, the role of the teacher and the tasks. Of the four factors, student interaction was ranked the most important factor. Moreover, challenges in group working were reported as students’ mixed abilities, difference in viewpoints, use of Vietnamese during discussion, time limitation and topic difficulty levels.

Keywords

Communicative activities, group work, interaction, learning process, role of the teacher

Cited as: Duyen, L.T.N., Huan, N.B., 2017. Factors influencing group work of students in learning English as a foreign language (EFL): A case study at a Vietnamese university. Can Tho University Journal of Science. Vol 6: 9-16.