pairwork

Pairwork is an activity in which two people work together, usually in a classroom, lesson, workshop, or training session. The word is especially common in English teaching. A teacher may ask students to do pairwork so they can practice a dialogue, discuss questions, compare answers, review each other's work, or complete a short task together.

This kind of activity helps both people take part more actively than they might in a whole-class discussion. It gives learners more time to speak, lets them hear another person's ideas right away, and can make practice feel more natural and less stressful. In language learning, this is one of the main reasons teachers use it so often.

The word usually refers to an organized learning activity, not just any situation where two people happen to work together. Because of that, it sounds natural in sentences like, "Now do the next exercise in pairs," or "After the explanation, the class moved into pairwork." It is often uncountable, especially when talking about this type of classroom practice in general.

So when you hear pairwork, think of two learners working side by side, speaking, thinking, and completing a task together as part of a lesson.