Student Bonding as Community-Building

• Main Author: MARTIN, James Edward
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2014
• Subjects: college students; student bonding; classrooms; English language teaching; Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research; Educational Methods; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cec_research/2; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=cec_research
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The concept of student bonding is likely to be supported by most teachers. It is quite clear that student attitudes influence learning, and bonding is often seen as a way to help create a positive atmosphere that will promote participation in class (i.e., making students more comfortable in the often “socially risky” environment of the English language classroom). For this purpose and to maximize bonding, cooperative language learning techniques, for example, have sometimes been used (see, e.g., Wichadee & Orawiwatnakul, 2012). In this article, however, I will focus my discussion on a related but somewhat different rationale for bonding and offer some activities to promote it in the particular environment of a university writing class.