'Thinking together' and its effect on students' language performance

What is it about?

After a number of years noticing that my students' exchanges in the English language classroom were poor in content, I decided to try to work on their skills to share their thoughts with each other. To do so I used an approach developed by Neil Mercer and his colleagues called "Thinking Together", adapting it to the needs and age of my university students. After training them in how to best communicate thinking, I analysed their exchanges in class, as well as their writings, to find that they had become much better at explaining their ideas to each other, and to their readers, backing them up with reasons and other important skills to make communication successful.

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