Our objectives are defined by the needs of the students' academic courses in the following year. The main job, therefore, in preparing these courses is to investigate what our students will have to do in their academic course, work out what aspects of language - grammar, vocabulary, skills etc - they will need and then find ways to teach and assess it (Gillett, 1989).
One skill needed by postgraduate students is the ability to take part in discussions. It is generally accepted that student-student interaction, both formal and informal, is beneficial in higher education (Pica& Doughty, 1985 Topping, 1996 Tan, 2003). It has also been reported that many Students in Higher Education, especially those from Asia, find this difficult and do