Cohesion

The term cohesion literally means “sticking together.” A cohesive group is one that holds together; its members usually like each other and jointly identify as members of their groups. You can probably think of a number of cohesive groups that you belong to, ranging from athletic teams to religious denominations. Groups that suffer from friction and fragmentation are less likely to promote learning than cohesive ones. Lack of cohesion increases the potential for subgrouping, where some members form a kind of alliance that is often in adversarial relation with other members and subgroups. A person who is not a member of a subgroup may end up as a scapegoat, vulnerable to attack from any subgroup. This kind of behavior is most blatant on the playground, but in fact it plays out constantly (though often with more subtlety) in adult organizations of any sort, including classrooms. In-group and out-group phenomena arouse anxiety and thus increase defensive behavior; energy is deflected from learning.  The cohesion of the classroom group is thus an important factor in our willingness as students to take risks and to invest ourselves in the learning task. When our learning group is cohesive, most of us feel encouraged to take speaking risks and enjoy the company of our classmates both in and out of class. We may feel a sense of solidarity with the teacher, who is perceived to be on the side of the students. They perceived classroom topics as “contaminated” when outside class, and the class suffered from an adversarial relationship with the teacher, who became an enemy. At the group level, a cohesive, effective group can enhance self-efficacy among its members. Effective cooperation in a cohesive group makes use of member diversity for the benefit of all. As a result of poor group functioning, members may experience apathy, inefficient learning, or even destructive psychological effects on the members that result in intense aversion to further learning. Like within-group effects, between-group interactions can be positive, promoting increased receptivity to the people and culture of the new language, or negative, potentially leading to rejection and negative stereotyping of the target language group.   Cohesion does not mean the enforcement of conformity and “group think” on members. It is a sense of affiliation and to some degree identification with other group members. An effective group, however, has a great deal of room for individuality and diverse points of view among its members. In the groups that you feel positive in, you probably also feel considerable freedom to be yourself.

Group culture is the product of the individuals who are members of the group. Your learning experiences and the effectiveness of your teachers are influenced by cultures of the groups to which you belong. Examples of groups are girls vs. boys, older students vs. younger students, one learning style vs. another learning style, conservative vs. liberal values, and so on. Every one of your attributes will put you into a group of students with like attributes and out of groups without those attributes. In your language class, your group is the full set of your classmates, even though each of you may belong to different groups outside of class, and your teacher.

How well your class works together as a group depends a lot on you and every member of the class. If you like some members and not others and let that show, you will be creating a subgroup within your class – and this is harmful to learning. If you are a quick learner and together with other quick learners look down on learners who need more explanation or take longer to give a response, you will be creating a different kind of subgroup within your class, and ultimately this will not help either you or the class. Watch out as well for individual students becoming scapegoats. This sometimes happens because students are afraid to express their own learning anxieties and “take them out” on a specific student. To the extent that each member of the class can help each other, be supportive to each other, and learn together as a harmonious group, your learning experience will be more effective and pleasant.  Your teachers, no less than you and your classmates, have personal styles, needs, fears, and motivations that affect their effectiveness and the quality of their relations with you. Their work is made more complicated by the fact that they usually act as group leaders as well as teaching.

Fortunately, teachers, teacher supervisors, trainers, and students who understand what is going on in a classroom can substantially enhance learning effectiveness by adroit application of interpersonal and group dynamics. And by changing the culture of dysfunctional groups they benefit not only the current members of the group but also future members.

Bibliography:

1.    Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,

2.    S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,

3.    Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP

4.    B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

§  ©