The pandemic period created new challenges for students in terms of academic achievement as well as social interaction which interferes with students’ well-being at school. It is known that engagement and interaction, communication and self-efficacy are key points for every EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learner. However, during distance learning, students lacked proper peer interaction, which negatively influenced productive skills development (speaking and writing). For new-coming students, who spent their first year at a new secondary school remotely, it was a double challenge as they experienced online communication with peers who they had never seen face-to-face before. Thus, in the post-pandemic period, teachers had to deal with an increased number of students who felt reluctant to communicate with each other.  

Research purpose  

The following research questions were shaping the study:  

• To what extent have online lessons affected students’ collaboration skills?  

• What are the ways of improving newcoming students’ deteriorated collaboration skills?   

The analysis of pre-pandemic era literature have showed that most of the studies presented distance learning as a tool of self-paced autonomous learning (Jones and Chen, 2008; Abraham, 2007), however the remote learning experience during the pandemic period unveiled many drawbacks in terms of collaboration and engagement. Students experienced lack of face-to-face interaction, misunderstanding in social or educational networks, failure in group works, etc (Dragomir & Simon, 2021). Thus, “back to the classroom” period meant shift from autonomous learning to collaborative learning for students.

In addition, previous research shows that pair work is the main interaction type which is used in English lessons for developing students’ communicative skills. This method is found to be one of the most effective as it requires every student to participate in class discussions in comparison to group work, where some students might be less involved. Additionally, pair work enables silent students in a class to be enrolled in the discussion, and introverted students who are hesitant to talk in front of the class get a chance to express their viewpoints. Moreover, earlier studies show that engaging audible conversation takes place mainly during face-to-face interaction between students (Achmad, 2014). Besides improving language skills by correcting grammar mistakes or helping to choose appropriate words during the conversation, learners develop social skills like politeness, turn-taking, respect for each other, attentive listening, etc. (Phipps, 1999). Harmer (2014) and Storch (2013) mentioned the importance of effective organisation of pair work in the ESL classroom. According to Harmer (2014), the decision on putting students into pairs or groups could be based on principles like friendship, streaming, chance, task, changing groups, gender and status. Thus, it is clearly seen that the process of pair work in class should be held in accordance with the above-mentioned factors.

Therefore, the current study focuses on the importance of organising effective pair work in English lessons during the post-pandemic period. 

This qualitative study is classroom action research focusing on the development of teacher practice knowledge and the improvement of learners’ academic performance (Dudley, 2011). The collaboration of teachers was required to understand the challenges of putting students into pairs and organizing effective work in the lesson. The cycle in the lesson study consisted of stages: joint planning, teaching and observing the lesson, interviewing students and post-discussion (Dudley, 2011, p.5). During the joint planning, teachers defined four main ways of putting students into new pairs: by level, by random choice, by personality traits (introverts and extroverts) and by students’ own choice. The given approach showed the influence of pair work organization on the effectiveness of the activity and students’ involvement in the lesson. The study was focused on observing the interaction of students with different language levels and personality traits while working in pairs. Thus, the lesson observation form designed by Dudley (2011, p.11) was applied. Participants of the study were grade 8 students who entered the new secondary school on the competitive basis. Participants were new to each other and to school community. There were 50 participants from four groups who took part in the study and four teachers of English who implemented the collaboratively planned strategies and techniques in the lesson. Moreover, interviews with students were conducted to get a deeper understanding of students’ interaction. Two students were interviewed from each group, semi-structured interview questions were prepared for each type of pair work division. The collected data was used to adjust teaching in the further cycles of lesson study.

Having analyzed and discussed the data collected during lesson observations and student interviews it was seen that pair work and real collaboration in class were rather difficult for students after online lessons. Student 1: “During the online lessons, I used to retell the stories to myself”. Student 2: “Some of my classmates turned out to be different from what I had expected, so it was difficult to work in pairs with some of them in September”. The effectiveness of students’ collaboration depends on the way the division on groups and pairs is organized. One of the main factors that should be considered at the stage of planning pair work is the type of activity or in other words its main purpose (lead-in, reflection, grammar or vocabulary practice). Pair work “by language level” seemed to be more effective for activities aimed at completing specific tasks and achieving specific learning objectives in the lesson. Pair work “by random choice” is recommended for activities with less significance in the lesson, such as the reflection part, etc. Pair work “by personality traits” showed its effectiveness when students were supposed to speak and share their thoughts in the lesson. This approach allowed to avoid the dominance of particular students in pairs while speaking activities. Pair work “by students’ choice” worked well in conducting discussions in class, as most students chose a partner with the same interests or ideas. However, some tasks were challenging for students to complete together as they had different subject levels. Thus, there were four main ways that teachers can use in order to divide students into pairs. One of the main conditions for quick recovery of teaching and learning in post pandemic time is teachers’ dense collaboration in identifying challenges and finding on the-spot solutions to them.

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