[MUSIC] In group work, you're asked to work with other students to complete tasks together. These tasks may be in class activities or they may be assessment items that count toward your mark. As a rhetorical situation the text producing group work have a set of authors, the group members. These group members are also the audience along with the lecturer as an audience to your final product. When marks or grades are involved, the stakes for group work can become incredibly high and put pressure on the collaboration of the group members because they need to work together to complete the assignment. For this reason, sometimes students become frustrated with group work. So what's the purpose of group work? Why do your lectures ask you to do it? Well, throughout our lives we have to work with others on getting work done. It's very rare in fact to complete tasks completely individually in workplace environments. By practicing working in groups at university, you can develop this very important skill. In this lecture we'll look at the way spoken communication can impact group cohesion or cooperation which is essential to working productively in groups. We'll start by looking at Clark's Theory of Joint Activity which can help us understand group work. Clark defines a joint activity as any activity in which two or more participants coordinate with each other to reach what they take to be a common set of goals. We carry out joint activities throughout our daily lives. For example, buying lunch or moving house. University course contexts are made up of many different kind of joint activities. These can be large scale activities, such as participating in a course lecture. Or small short activities, such as greeting the person next to you in class. Group work is a classic example of a joint activity. In group work at university, the common set of goals for the group to achieve is largely determined by the task set out by the lecturer or tutor. As your group works together, you will interpret these goals and the ways that they will be carried out. This interpretation and negotiation is what Clark calls coordination, and this is where communication comes in. As you discuss the task aims and how you'll achieve them, you are coordinating the task goals through communication. You also use communication to carry out the tasks themselves in the way you have negotiated with the group. This raises a core distinction between group work and individual work on tasks and assignments. Carrying out joint activities successfully involves what Clark terms joint commitment between two or more people. In contrast, when you're working on your own, you can make these decisions on your own. The necessity of establishing joint commitment before moving forward with the task, is what can make group work seem more challenging than working on your own. Because you need to consult with others and reach agreement. How do we establish mutual commitment to joint actions through communication? According to Clark, this is done through projective pairs, a term used to describe two utterances done by two different speakers. In the first utterance, the first speaker puts forward a potential next action to be done together. In the second utterance, the second speaker responds to the proposed next action. If they commit to the action, they take up the proposed action in some way. For example, if you want to go with a coffee with your friend, you might start by saying, should we go for a coffee? If they want to take up this proposed action in this second utterance, they can say sure. Alternatively the second speaker might not take up the action. They could do this by explicitly rejecting or disagreeing with the proposed action, or by simply not responding to it. Now let's look at first actions in projective pairs. These can be done in many different ways, such as by asking a question, making a suggestion, or declaring what will happen next. The way potential joint actions are communicated can have an impact on group dynamics. There's been research done by Stevanovic and Perakyla in this area. They focus on two ways of putting forward a proposed action, proposals and assertions. They discuss how these first actions impact the way decision making is done in groups. Let's start by looking at proposals. According to Stefanovic and Parakyla a proposal makes it clear that the speaker is seeking joint commitment before moving ahead with the proposed action. An example of a proposal in university group work would be we could start by looking at the literature on this topic. The use of could means that another speaker can agree or give approval in response to establish joint commitment. The way the first action is communicated shows the other group members that the speaker wants to establish commitment together before moving ahead. In contrast with assertions, the speaker puts forward information to the group about what will happen, instead of putting forward a joint decision to be made. An example of an assertion in university group work would be, we'll start by looking at the literature on this topic. Because there's no implied joint decision to be made, the second speaker is being asked to receive the given information and action instead of being asked whether or not they want to go along with it. Why does this difference in communicating the first action make a difference for group work? Well, according to Stevanovic & Peräkylä when speakers do proposal and elicit joint commitment from others, this implies more evenly distributed rights to determine future actions. This means the different group members have more equal contribution to making decisions. By contrast, when speakers do assertions, they make a rather blunt authority claim. This means that one person is making the decision on behalf of the group. If you were working together on a joint activity in a group with your manager at work and your colleagues, you might expect for your manager to make assertions. And for you and your colleagues to receive this information. But in group work with peers at university, claiming authority through your communication could be problematic. Benwell and Stokoe have investigated communication between group members in university tutorials. They found that people who make strong claims to knowledge or expertise through assertions, were met with resistance by group members. Interestingly, this was not done through explicit rejection, but through silence and humor. Those who made more delayed claims to expertise and authority that were softened through vagueness and use of everyday terminology, were able to maintain group cohesion more effectively. This demonstrates that it's important to take account of roles and dynamics in the group. If the group wants to have a leader and put someone in this position then they may look to this person for assertions of next actions. But if everyone is working more collaboratively, proposals maybe more productive in terms of getting group members to commit to joint actions so that you can achieve the task aims. Finally, it's important to remember that you can contribute through both first and second actions. If no one takes up or expands the first actions, then the group's progress will be stalled. This is where self awareness and sensitivity to group dynamics can help you. Ultimately the goal of group interaction is to reach group cohesion if possible. This has been shown to lead to task achievement. Effective spoken communication is vital to achieving cohesion. Carefully considering the personalities of the people involved in your group and the way you can communicate desired actions will help you to more successfully reach the aims of your joint activity. [MUSIC]
