This provides a realistic context for the expressions they studied. One of the main benefits of these materials is that they treat groupwork not as a separate component, but as an integral part of the language lesson itself.
Students learn that cooperation is a necessary aspect of using a language.
Colleagues comment that this leads students to generalize their newly gained group skills to other language lessons where groupwork is used. More than one teacher was surprised when some students finished a groupwork task in record time due to the efficiency of having a group leader and an organized discussion. Another benefit of these materials is that they allow all teachers, even those who have never heard of cooperative learning, to implement CL in their language classes, since features of CL are built into the materials themselves. Since developing these materials, we have used them in a wide range of proficiency levels at junior colleges and universities with fairly universal success. In general, groups produce more English for longer periods of time than groups that have not received any training.