What are different types of student grouping?

Whatever the seating arrangement in a classroom, students can be organized in different ways: they can work as a whole class, in groups, in pairs, or individually.

1. Whole class: As we have seen, there are many occasions when a teacher working with the whole class is the type of a classroom organization. However, this does not always mean the class sitting in orderly rows; whatever the seating arrangement, the teacher can have the students focus on him or her and the task in hand.
2. Group work and pair work: These have become increasingly popular in language teaching since they are seen to have many advantages. Group work is a cooperative activity: five students, perhaps, students tend to participate more equally, and they are also more able to experiment and use the language than they are in a whole-class arrangement.
   Pair work has many of the same advantages. It is mathematically attractive if nothing else; the moment students get into pairs and start working on a problem or talking about something, many more of them will be doing the activity than if the teacher was working with the whole class, where only one student talks at a time.
   Both pair work and group work give the students chances for greater independence. Because they are working together without the teacher controlling every move, they take some of their own learning decisions, they decide what language to use to complete a certain task, and they can work without the pressure of the whole class listening to what they are doing. Decisions are cooperatively arrived at, responsibilities are shared.
   The other great advantage of group work and pair work is that they give the teacher the opportunity to work with individual students. While groups A and C are doing one task, the teacher can spend some time with Group B who need special attention.
   Neither group work nor pair work are without their problems. As with separate table seating, students may not like the people they are grouped or paired with. In any one group or pair, one student may dominate while the others stay silent. In difficult classes, group work may encourage students to be more disruptive the they would be in a whole-class setting, and, especially in a class where students share the same first language, they may revert to their first language, rather than English, when the teacher is not working with them.
3. Solo work:
   This can have many advantages: it allows students to work at their own speed, allows them thinking time, allows them, in short, to be individuals. It often provides welcome relief from the group-centered nature of much language teaching. For the time that solo work takes place, students can relax their public faces and go back to considering their own individual needs and progress.
   
   
   Cited From:  How to Teach English (2005) by Jeremy Harmer
   
   
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