Individual or group?

I often found myself battling in class about whether I should group my students and have them learn together or ask them learn individually. There are pros and cons for both approaches. As teachers, we need to fully understand the possible scenarios before we make out minds.

Pros on groupwork:
1. It increase the numbers of talking opportunities for individual students.
2. With more ideas and opinions, it would create a more complete learning experience.
3. It encourages boarder skills of cooperation and negotiation , and more private than work in front of the whole class. (See Lynne Flowerdew for more information)
4.It promotes students' self confidence and encourage them to develop their own rules.

Cons on groupwork:
1. It is likely to be noisy and possibly lost control.
2.Not all students enjoy it since some might prefer or require more attention from the teacher.
3. There are some students in the group would assume the dominate roles and cause others to lose their voice.
4.Groups requires longer time to set up in the beginning and wrap up in the end especially if all the students have to move around in the classroom.