Week 3: Effective pair practic

Bruno: It's already almost the end of May! How are your classes going,
Stephen?

Stephen: Six weeks into term and I've already covered a quarter of the
material in the textbook with most of my first year classes. Of course,
there has been the disruption of the Golden Week holidays, but by now
most classes have settled into the Immediate Method really well. I still
quickly review the Three Golden Rules (Don't remain silent when asked a
question, Give long and rich answers, and Vary your speech) in most
classes, but the students have picked up on them enough to see how they
make classroom participation and conversation so much smoother. It's now
more a case of setting small tasks for them, such as 'use three
different patterns of speech – open questions, closed questions and
speaking in statements about yourself in today's pair practice'.

Of course, as the students become more accustomed to the method the time
which I usually spent explaining what do to has gradually dropped off,
and yet everyone still understands their role and goals for each class
clearly. The two halves of each class group, yellow and green,
understand that even if they are not being tested this week, the same
questions and topics will crop up the next week, so they need to know
it. Another important step that most students have passed is receiving a
high mark, for example, 9 out of 10, for a polished and natural
performance. Once a student realizes that all he has to do to get a
great mark is to practice seriously, his motivation begins to pick up.
As more and more of the students in each class realize this, the
atmosphere changes, and the positive mood towards practice and testing
picks up steam. I can definitely say that most of my students have much
more confidence in speaking English one-on-one with me now than they did
just a few weeks ago. It's an incredible change, and really makes
everything easier and easier for the teacher.

One thing that constantly stumps me is how to guide pair practice. I
want students to mix with as many different students as possible, but of
course most of them will talk to the same few partners every week. This
is fine, but I find that sometimes students, who are not being tested
and have finished practicing with their four different partners, tend to
start chatting loudly in Japanese. Students seem to practice more
seriously when I pair them with someone they don't usually talk with,
probably because they feel less inclined to chat when they are finished.
Has anyone else noticed this? I'm working on ways to rotate partners and
have students meeting new people every class, but it's a difficult
prospect.

One idea I came up with was to randomly group the students into 4s or 6s
(depending on class size) and have them practice with all other members
of their group in turn. This also saves them having to move around the
room once they are all seated together. Does anyone else have any ideas
on how to keep pair practice fresh?