Creating a study group

Creating a study group

Listen to the conversation about creating a study group to practise and improve your listening skills.

Do the preparation task first. Then listen to the audio and do the exercises.

Preparation

Transcript

Ali: Hey, you guys, I've been looking for you. I've got an idea – a study group. What do you think? Are you interested?

Dina: Yes! I need a study group, in a big way.

Bea: Me too.

Ali: Do you think we have enough people here for a study group? I mean, there are only four of us …

Bea: Sorry. Three of us. Chris can't do study group. Right, Chris?

Chris: Yeah, there's no way I can do a study group. I have an assignment and then I'm too busy. But I'll stay for this first meeting.

Ali: Should we try and get another group together with us for this?

Bea: No, I don't think so. I think three is fine. Ideal size, really.

Dina: Me too.

Ali: OK, three people then. Four people for the first meeting. What next?

Bea: What about a meeting place? We can't meet here in the library …

Ali: It's not too bad, especially if those other people would go away.

Bea: But we can't exactly ask them to leave, and people might get annoyed with us talking.

Dina: Can I say something here?

Ali: Sure, go ahead.

Dina: There's a study hall next to the cafeteria. It's almost always empty. Could we meet there?

Ali: A study hall?! Who knew? Well, it sounds good to me.

Bea: Yeah. I've never been there but …

Ali: So, we ought to decide how long for and how often.

Dina: I read somewhere that you should make the meeting at the same time each week. Like a seminar. That way we'd take it more seriously.

Bea: We may as well make it for this time since we're all here. Is this time OK?

Dina: Works for me.

Ali: Me too.

Chris: Hang on just a minute. I know I'm not going to be in this group, but aren't we supposed to have a seminar at this time every other week?

Dina: Umm, no.

Bea: Thursday, no? 

Ali: No, that's on Thursday. 

Chris: Sorry. Forget I said anything.

Ali: Don't worry about it.

Bea: So everyone agrees that this time is fine? Every week?

Ali: How long should we make it?

Bea: An hour?

Dina: Could we find a way of making it two hours?

Ali: Two hours seems a bit like … too much. To start with then?

Bea: Ninety minutes? Compromise?

Ali: Is that OK with you, Dina?

Dina: Fine by me.

Ali: OK, so I guess all we have left to decide is exactly what we'll do when we meet. The final exam is a way off. I guess we could review our notes, or practise learning things by heart.

Dina: I have a list of dos and don'ts actually that I got online. I could be a moderator, and we could use the ideas as a starting point …

Discussion

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Submitted by Layria on Mon, 11/01/2021 - 17:41

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I remember once a little group of study when I was at University. We formed a group of four people but it was a completely mess because one of them was very talkative and other girl was always distracted , so my friend an I decided not to participate anymore. After this experience we decided to look for people with similar intereset and personalities by an interview. It really worked.

Submitted by Diogo1606 on Fri, 08/01/2021 - 00:54

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No, but I have created a group to make a study presentation in school. It was a little bit tiresome to guide, but it went good in the end.

Submitted by Saad786 on Sun, 03/01/2021 - 15:30

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Yes, I have created study group of my class fellows. Study in group can be helpful in many ways. Group study can ease our predicament. We can get guidelines from fellow students to learn a topic. Group study is very beneficial in sharing knowledge and gaining confidence of attempting a paper.

Submitted by andreaz98 on Fri, 11/12/2020 - 16:11

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Good evening, I need help. I don't understand why the answer to Task 1 - 4 is "every two weeks on thursday".

Hello andreaz98,

Chris says that they have a seminar every other week, which means every two weeks. He thinks that it is today, but the others correct him and tell him that the seminar is on Thursday. Thus, the seminar is on Thursday every two weeks.

 

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team

Submitted by Asni on Thu, 03/12/2020 - 22:51

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Actually no, I like studying on my own and preferably in my room. I easily lose my concentration, so studying with people makes it hard for me to be fully concentrated on my work. I had loads of group assignments and projects when I was at university, fortunately, technology was always there to help us work together without having to study in group.. Most of the time, only a few short meetings were necessary to assign tasks and monitor the project's progress. I'd never been able to carry something out with other people, because I was kind of perfectionist. As time has gone by, I have been taught a fairly valuable lesson; we live in a community and we are meant to help each other, variety is wealth so the share of ideas and effort often leads to better results.
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Submitted by javibuendi on Thu, 19/11/2020 - 09:28

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Yes, I have created study groups at university. In my degree we had to do a lot of group work, where over 4-5 people were needed. I used to work along with my friends, but we didn´t work efficiently because there was so confidence between us. That made that we left our duties for the last minute, and as you can guess, the final result was a mess. From time to time, I worked along with randomly people of the class, and I enjoyed it because I discovered new and interesting points of view, different ways of seeing life. Cheers from Madrid.
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Submitted by danisep on Thu, 29/10/2020 - 02:01

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I never created a study group at university. I always joined with other mates to realize some tasks but never a big deal, through the university I used to study with a friend in the library, her home or cateria, we tried to choose the same subjects to help us each other.. I just know that little groups work better than big ones, big groups sometimes could be a disorder and choosing properly your mates could work to avoid lazy people.

Submitted by mcambindo22 on Wed, 28/10/2020 - 11:37

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Yes, I've created a study group at the university, and usually, people join with others because of convenience, so that somebody has better knowledge of a specific topic and you need to get a good degree or simply learning more, or sometimes people is a little bit competitive and trying to do the best possible group.