Peter Morgan 106365

Cooperative Learning in Science at Brunswick Secondary College

Context
Brunswick secondary college has a language centre where students recently arrived in Australia from non
English speaking background's (NESB) get intensive language support and are gradually assisted to move
into the mainstream. The class of year 10 students the group of five student teachers were working with
were classified as an ESL class and consisted of students from Eastern Europe, Africa, South East Asia
who had been in the country probably an average of 1year. Because of the perceived challenges of
teaching with students from non english speaking backgrounds it was decided by the student teachers to
work cooperatively in developing the material to be used in exploring the role of student talk in teaching
the concepts of Forces and their effects. Each student teacher was allocated a group of 3-4 students
however over the 4 sessions run with the students, for one reason or another the groups continually
changed in composition.

Session 1

The first task that was carried out was to gain the student's permission to use the tape recorders for our
research. We used it as a chance to explore roles as can be seen from the sample form below

GROUP ROLES
Reader- Your job is to read the following extract to your group members.
Clarifier- Your job is to ask questions that will make our request clearer for you and your group
Recorder- Your job is to record the groups decision, objections and reasons for their decision.
Reporter- Your job is to report the discussion back to the class

TAPE RECORDING
Your teaching team has been asked to use tape recorders to help them study how you learn in this
cooperative and group style we will be working with. They will record the session and transcribe
(write up) small sections that they feel best illustrate the point they are trying to make. This will
hopefully help them make their teaching better, for you and for other people.

Because you have rights we would like your permission to tape record the sessions we have with
you and use them in our work.

Please feel free to say no if you have any objections. You might like to say yes but for reasons of
privacy ask us to destroy the tapes afterwards and not use your real names in the writing we do.
You might like to say yes with no provisions.

It's up to you. You decide.

This caused surprise and confusion and was only achieved through oral instructions. It is a shame in a
sense that we weren't able to record the student conversations about the issue of permission. I felt that this
was a very important step to take from the view of establishing some degree of trust between students and
teachers. The class voted as a whole that it was ok for us to tape record but did ask us not to use their
names. Hence in transcripts the initials of students are used. What this exercise didn't achieve was a real
understanding of the nature of the group roles. The fault may lie in my instructions to the students, which
for NESB students may well have been too difficult.

The intention of the first session was to introduce through a variety of activities the notion of using high
structure roles to learn cooperatively.

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Task One
Imagine you are a passenger on a bus
Make a list or create a diagram of forces that act on you (as a passenger) and the bus under the
following conditions. You may wish to carry out this task as a role play
1) The forces on you and the bus, when the bus is at rest or parked.
2) The forces on you and the bus when the bus accelerator pedal becomes stuck down.
3) The forces on you and the bus when the bus runs over a cat
4) Etc. etc.

The roles for this task were reader, recorder, clarifier, reporter
After the students deciphered the task I asked the students to act out the scenarios in a role play. They were
very hesitant about doing this particularly in allocating the role of bus driver and asked if they could use
their imagination's instead.

Setting up the bus role play

Peter: Maybe you can organise yourself into the bus with a driver, a passenger and someone to take the money, a conductor
and use the chairs over here to sit like you are on a bus
A: Do you want to be the driver
Peter: Who's decided to be the driver?
A: Who wants to be the driver
M: I'll do it
Peter: So M will be the driver
A: But you were the recorder
M: Yeah you be the driver I will be the recorder
A: Nooo
Peter: You are feeling a bit silly aren't you
Yeah
A: You do it C you are a boy
C: No
A: Go on
S: Can we just sit and imagine we are on the bus
Peter: Ok you don't have to get out there that's true.
M: Yeah imagine you are bus driver

Validating their choice not to physically take part in a role play was I believe important in giving the group
permission to direct how they would tackle the tasks. The few questions that the group managed to answer
in the remaining time while factually incorrect showed good use of understanding the roles and highlighted
the level of english literacy amongst the group. The student with the role of reader had a particularly
strong accent which made it difficult for the rest of the group to understand and the recorder had difficulty
with spelling. The clarifier had difficulty understanding her role. The group overcame these difficulties
with the more able students moving into the roles and assisting one another to record their answers to the
questions. Unfortunately much of this discussion is indecipherable on the tape. However with the help of
a model bus and plenty of free conversation between group members they were able to complete some of
the task. On reflection this task was probably too difficult or abstract for the students and as a consequence
the group of student teachers modified the work for the other two sessions.
The students commented that the roles were difficult but in my opinion for the first time they had probably
used this learning strategy they did very well and showed real signs of getting to grips with this 'strange'
approach.

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Session 2

My group of four became two and therefore I adopted a low role structure with the two students in essence
working through a number of work sheets (appendix 2). Forces being defined as pushes and pulls students
were asked to identify the agent and the receiver of the force. Because of the changed dynamics of having
only two students much of the communication between the two is particularly hard to decipher when
transcribed. The dynamics of the two students meant that they worked through the examples with the
minimum of discussion, the less able student in the main deferring to the more able student. I had left the
students to work through the work sheet on their own which they did and came back in when it looked like
they had completed the first stage.

Session 2:

A: Can we use these more than once

C: Uhmm I'm sure you can
A: Changing the motion.
Tell me the last one C
C: Stopping the object moving
Stopping the object moving
A: Its a umbrella yep
A: No its getting it to move, its moving. Because this car is taking it with it, its so it wants this one to move as well,
moving. Do you get it
C: just the one to the stop
A: Ok

Peter: Well done you did that really quickly lets have a look. Pushing and pulling. Which one is the agent which one is the
receiver

A: The head is the uhhh agent the lion is the receiver.

Peter: Excellent do you agree with that C
C: (nod)
Peter: Ok what about, lets ask C this one here. Which one is the agent and which one is the receiver in this case here.
C: The agent is the uh acting the hand
Peter: The agent is the hand- ok and what is the receiver
C: The receiver is just maybe the body.

One of the problems of group work is ascertaining the level of understanding of individuals within the
group, here I try through questioning to see that both students are able to articulate their understanding of
the task. In a class of 20plus students this becomes more difficult to do with all students and the dynamics
of group interaction are therefore more critical in allowing all students to explore the meanings for
themselves. In this segment of the lesson I picked up on one of the examples used in their work sheet to
extend the idea that forces can operate in two directions at once. I was able to do this because I was only
responsible for the one small group, and I could ascertain from their progress that they were ready to be
extended. However I did not have a work sheet prepared for this type of extension which illustrates the
importance of preparing materials for students which to some extent can anticipate the type of scaffolding
that students may require. The design of the work sheets is therefore crucial to effective learning and
teaching in this context of cooperative learning.

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Session 3

In this session the students were given a practical designed to determine the relationship between force and
mass (Appendix 3). The students in all groups seemed to really enjoy the practical session and there was
lots of evidence of cooperation as you would anticipate, the noise of four groups pushing trolleys down the
ramp meant it was difficult to effectively transcribe from the tape. The data generated was inconclusive
but this had to be teased out of the students who were in the roles of recorder and the idea of repeating
measurements was finally voiced by a group member and acted upon.

The group was rather large due to the availability of space within the classroom to perform the experiment.
This interestingly resulted in a split into three subgroups. The experimenters, the recorders and one student
who took it upon himself to liase between the two groups. The roles adopted therefore were a mix of low
and high structure, which was an interesting combination and worked effectively.

The practical activity used had some material that would have required a fair degree of scaffolding for
these students and the data generated, for a variety of reasons, did not help support the principle in
question. Therefore they were asked to come up with some general statement about the relationship
between mass and distance travelled.

M: I think the bus has the more weight it will go further

A: Yeah
(Murmurs of agreement from other group members)
Peter: Ok what about writing that down as a statement

A: What's the thing with the weight on it?

M: Ramp?
A: No the thing with the tires
C: Trolley car
(Writing)
A: Is this ok
Peter: Check it out with each other !
A: Ah Ok (laugh)
Peter: Your the bosses!

Peter Maybe some one can read it out loud for the rest of the group
G: The reporter?
Peter: Yeah the reporter.
T: As more mass is added to the trolley car this time the travel increased

It was clear from the nonverbal interactions that all students had a handle on this interpretation of their
results and helped each other to construct this statement. The session finished before the notion of force
could be brought into their discussion.

One factor that I remember from the session but unfortunately do not have a suitable taped extract is that
there was much help with spelling and English expression. The recorder sought and was given assistance
by other students. This cooperation was particularly pleasing given the background of the class as ESL and
highlights the benefits of this style of teaching particularly for NESB students.
(See article in Appendix 5 Cooperative learning and the ESL classroom--a natural marriage)

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Session 4

The aims of this session were to get the students to cooperatively construct an experimental report of the
previous practical session. In order to facilitate this the students were asked to reflect on the nature of
experimental reports and how they could represent forces using diagrams (appendix 4). The group started
of with 3 members and gradually as students arrived became 6. I decided to split the tasks and allow time
for sharing of the two subgroups at the end of the session.

The students who had got stuck into first work sheet were left to get on with it while the other tasks were
introduced to the latecomers.
This excerpt comes from the group working on Experimental Reports

A: Method Uh
B: The things that was used to do build do the experiment. How the experiment was done
A: The steps
B: Yeah the steps that were done
A: Tells us how to do the experiment in steps or something like that.

A: Ok results- the final outcome

B: Yes must be the final outcome
A: The final outcome of the experiment

A: And conclusion
B: Um um the thoughts about the experiment and what we find out at the end. Um
A: The conclusion is a sentence... no! a short summary explaining whether a experiment was done correctly or not..
explain a in . I don't know.
B: The experiment maybe explaining
A: A short summary explaining how the experiment was done
B: and what we found
A: How the (writing)

A: Do you have your notes here. You know the paper she gave us.
B: Yeah Yeah I'll see. No I haven't got them here.
A: Hang on I'll ask him
B: Did he know
A: He was away- ha

The first part of this transcript seemed very promising the two students working out the wording for their
written answers. With another couple of people the hope is they would have refined it even further. The
last segment was puzzling until I pieced it together with earlier conversations. The first question in the
work sheet reproduced below asked the students to recall their earlier experience of writing reports. The
students remembered an chemistry experiment they had done previously but could not recall any details. A
lot of time was spent trying to recall the details before they moved on to completing the remainder of the
work sheet and it appears that when they had finished they again tried to find out by asking the ESL
integration aide.
Experimental Reports
Roles for this activity
Have you written experimental reports before? Recorder: Records the group responses
Reporter: Reports the groups findings
to other groups in the class

Write the names of the group members who have written reports and if they can remember what the
experimental report was about.

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The students obviously felt it important to recall the details of that report and went to great lengths to do so
which was interesting and unpredicted.

The sub groups were brought together to share and begin the construction of the report jointly. I did not
really allow enough time for this stage of the process unfortunately but some progress was made on the
task.

A: Where are the forces acting on the trolley. You were the scientist you should be knowing that side. What was the force
on the trolley when you were.. Did you push it?
C: No I just let it go
A: How did it go down?
C: sorry
A: How did it go down?

This last segment illustrates that some of the students by this stage had a very clear idea about the nature
and responsibilities of the group roles used.

Conclusion

How successful was this approach to cooperative learning? I'll leave the majority of my comments for the
reflection. The lack of stability of groups over the course of the sessions placed a severe limitation in the
amount of work that could be conducted in the class time and it felt, despite carefully planned activities and
strategies, very much like flying by the seat of your pants. I consciously tried to leave students to work
through the material on their own but there is plenty of evidence on the tape recorder of over involvement
on my part in the class discussions. I think that because I was only responsible for one group of five or six
students that the temptation to take on a more active role in the students learning was too great.

What did the students think of the strategies used. I believe that by the last session most students who had
been present throughout had accustomed themselves to using roles and were using them effectively. I
believe there is plenty of evidence from the tape recordings and my own observations that students stayed
remarkably focused on the tasks in hand and enjoyed doing them and I'll leave it to a student to have the
last words.

Student Comment at End of Unit

S: It was good not having science for four weeks

Peter: Does that mean it didn't feel like science?
S: No well um it was more fun

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REFLECTIONS

I found the teaching experience at Brunswick to be extremely useful. I have taken the task to be an
exercise in cooperative learning in which scaffolding for talk is a part of that framework. I had used some
of the strategies of cooperative learning earlier in the year whilst teaching at Chisholm TAFE and was
excited about being given the opportunity to do so in a secondary setting. My previous experience has
relied on openly valuing and encouraging this style of learning and giving verbal instructions for specific
tasks within the context of my normal teaching style.

The sessions at Brunswick allowed me to take a more structured approach to delivering cooperative
learning something I half recognised as being important in a secondary school. Both the students and
myself found the use of roles initially confusing and alien, by the end of the four sessions the students
seemed to have grasped the concept and contrary to my expectations found that the high structure approach
where roles are assigned and stuck to the most comfortable. The value of this approach has therefore
confirmed my initial suspicions that more structure is required for this type of learning than I have
previously used.

The design of the activities that the groups were asked to do seemed very important. Very few of them
were sufficiently clear for students to pick up and run with and all required verbal explanation by me. The
effort in designing activities that students could complete with minimum teacher input is likely to be a
important factor in the decision whether to adopt this style of teaching. It is likely that in a normal
classroom of 25 students this would become even more important. In effect the tasks should be designed to
scaffold key points for the students and as you are giving the responsibility for learning back to the students
these scaffolding needs to be carefully considered so as not to bore or frustrate students with tasks too
simple or too demanding. You also need to have a sufficient number of tasks that would allow students to
extend or revisit certain points. Something that I consciously tried to do was step away from the
interaction between students, I found that do this I had to, quite often, physically step away as I lacked the
confidence that the approach and activities were meeting the students learning needs. I was aware of the
need to mimic the normal classroom as much as possible and trust the students to sink or swim however
this was difficult maybe because I knew it was a choice in this particular context.

My belief that cooperative learning has many advantages over more traditional styles of schooling has been
vindicated by the experience at Brunswick. I observed students who relished the attention and opportunity
afforded by this style of learning, some of this may have been artificial in that one teacher was responsible
for only five or so students. The students as a consequence were very engaged in the activities they were
asked to complete. Several students who initially seemed bored and disinterested, almost despite
themselves, got involved within the group context. I observed students who had a better grasp on material
assist those who did not. I observed the active processing of ideas and concepts through talk as students
struggled to master what was asked of them.

Our decision as a group of student teachers to cooperate in the planning of activities for the class was I
believe an extremely important one. I contend that cooperative learning in a formal sense is very alien to
the vast majority of people and that in order to be effective practitioners of this style of teaching we need to
experience cooperation in our own lives particularly in our own learning. My own informal and therefore
biased observations of other peoples teaching style is that those who in our group found cooperating the
most difficult seemed less able to hand over the reins of the learning to the students, turning the same
activities we all used into something very different. This said it appeared that our group through planning
discussions and debriefing was able to more effectively embrace this approach to learning.

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I believe that it would be most beneficial for future teaching experiences of this nature if all student
teachers working in a particular classroom were to work along the same lines that we found ourselves
adopting. This would mean that as a group the activities could be developed cooperatively thus sharing the
responsibility for developing the tasks, which emphasises the importance I believe these materials have.
Having the experience of cooperating in the teaching and learning process will I believe model the process
to the students in subtle ways and give valuable experience of the highs and lows of cooperative learning.
It would also provide a focus for the 'in class' behaviour of the student teachers and assist them in resisting
the natural urge to take a teacher centred position in effectively a tutoring session and to change to a role of
facilitator instead.

The lows I referred to above were not met in my experience at Brunswick the students being in the main
highly engaged and very respectful of each other's contribution. It transpired that the student's recent
experience in the language centre and their own experience in the struggle to learn English has meant that
they, as a class, were very good at cooperating. A year 7 class on my 2 nd teaching round were less skilled
in this area with a fight breaking out due to a breakdown in cooperation. Whilst extreme this for me
highlighted the need to spend some time with students teaching cooperative skills.

This exercise has given me more confidence in exploring what cooperative learning means, how it is done
and what it can do. It hasn't answered all my questions and it has raised many more, many of which are
still difficult to articulate. I have tried to tone down my evangelical zeal in this assignment, but hopefully
have failed to some degree, so it will not come as a surprise to say I will definitely be using this framework
in my future teaching and hope to increase my skill as I gain more experience.

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Appendix 1

Session 1
GROUP ROLES
Reader- Your job is to read the following extract to your group
TAPE RECORDING members.
Clarifier- Your job is to ask questions that will make our request
clearer for you and your group
Recorder- Your job is to record the groups decision, objections
and reasons for their decision.
Reporter- Your job is to report the discussion back to the class.

Your teaching team has been asked to use tape recorders to help them study how you learn in this
cooperative and group style we will be working with. They will record the session and transcribe (write
up) small sections that they feel best illustrate the point they are trying to make. This will hopefully help
them make their teaching better, for you and for other people.

Because you have rights we would like your permission to tape record the sessions we have with you and
use them in our work.

Please feel free to say no if you have any objections. You might like to say yes but for reasons of privacy
ask us to destroy the tapes afterwards and not use your real names in the writing we do. You might like to
say yes with no provisions.

It's up to you. You decide.

Task One
Imagine you are a passenger on a bus
Make a list or create a diagram of forces that act on you (as a passenger) and the bus under the following conditions.
You may wish to carry out this task as a role play
1) The forces on you and the bus, when the bus is at rest or parked.
2) The forces on you and the bus twhen the bus accelerator pedal becomes stuck down.
3) The forces on you and the bus when the bus runs over a cat
4) The forces on you and the bus when the bus swerves too miss an old woman
5) The forces on you and the bus when the bus crashes into a brick wall
6) The forces on you and the bus when the bus crashes of the road over a cliff and crashes to the ground

Task Two
Imagine you are an astronaut. The captain has asked you to go outside the space station and repair a broken antenna.
You put on your space suit and get ready to go outside into the cold dark space. You are very careful to attach your
lifeline to the space station, as you know that if you drift away from the space station you could be lost forever. While
moving around outside the space station your lifeline comes loose and you start to drift away from the space station.
The only things you are carrying are a large spanner and hammer.

How do you get back to the space station?

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Questions we have

We'd like to help make it interesting by using your own questions about forces and motion. This activity is
here to help you write down your ideas.

The roles for the first part of this activity are

Recorder-
Your job is to fill in the table below with the questions and comments people in the group give you.

Question manufacturer-
Your job is to come up with the questions

When you are told to stop this first part then you will change roles for the reporting back to the whole class.

Tidy up-
Your job is to make sure that the question's your group have come up with make sense. Can the English be
improved.

Reporter
Your job once the questions have been tied up is to report them back to the whole class

The questions will be written on the board and we will attempt to design activities that will help you to
answer your own questions.

Questions we have

How do jet engines make planes fly?

Why when a car stops do I fall forward?

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Appendix 2
Session 2

FORCES EVERYWHERE

Think about how you got to school this morning?

Think about the ways forces played a part in getting you here.

One person will be chosen as the storyteller and will tell the story of how they got to school starting from when they
woke up.

One person will try and identify all the occasions when a force or force was involved in the storyteller getting to school

One person will record those occasions in the first column of the table below.

TABLE 1
Example Scientific Agent Receiver
Force

Now think whether the examples the group has come up from the story are in fact scientific forces.

A recorder is to write yes or no in the second column alongside the examples.

Why have you as a group made the choices you have?

You probably have some idea of what a force is and therefore what it is not.

As a group come up with a definition of Force.

FORCE IS………………………………..

A recorder will write down the definition

A reporter who will be chosen at the end of the activity will present the groups definition to the whole class.

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FORCES EVERWHERE CONTINUED

READ THROUGH THE NOTES BELOW

Roles:
Reader- Read out the paragraph below to the group
Clarifier- ask or write down any questions you have
Summariser- your role is to come up with a summary of the paragraph for everyone else in the group.

Definition of Scientific Force.

We are going to use the following definition of force to help us in this study unit

 A Force is a push or a pull or a twist

 A Force involves an agent and a receiver
 A Force is measured in Newton's

You probably used a definition of force being a push or pull in the previous exercise

What about the statement a force has an agent and receiver.

In this situation the agent is the thing exerting the force.

The receiver is the thing experiencing the force.

Here's some more information on forces

When we change the motion or shape of an object we are applying a force. When you push a supermarket
trolley, you apply a force to make the trolley move forward. When you squeeze a blown up balloon you
change the shape of the balloon. When you ride a bicycle you push the pedals with your feet and turn or
twist the handlebars with your arms.

Now go back to TABLE 1 and identify the agent and receiver in your examples

Can your group come up with some more examples of forces and identify the agent and receiver write
these down in your table.

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Appendix 3

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Appendix 4

Session 4 Roles for this activity

Recorder: Records the group responses
Experimental Reports Reporter: Reports the groups findings
to other groups in the class
Have you written experimental reports before?
Write the names of the group members who have written reports and if they can remember what the
experimental report was about.

Why do scientists write experimental reports?

As a group come up with a sentence that describes the purpose of an experimental report.
If you can't come up with something you are happy about try the next activity and come back here.

An experimental report generally has a number of sections. This structure helps fulfil the purpose of a
scientific report.
Using the sample report you have been given list the features of the report and try to explain the purpose of
each section. We have given you the first one.

Aim -A sentence that explains why you did the experiment

Go back to the previous activity and look at the sentence you were writing and see if it still makes sense
and is accurate.
Make any changes to the sentence here.

The reporter now will take the groups explaining sentence to the other groups who will read the sentence
and may ask you to clarify (make clear) what your group have written. If you as the reporter get stuck you
can always check back with your group for help.

Everyone should copy down the final sentence about the purpose of the experimental report and the parts
of the experimental report in their notebooks.

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FORCE DIAGRAMS

If a force is defined as a push or pull how can we represent the direction of the force and the size of the
force.

Try this:
Two people stand face to face and push against each other.

Can you feel the forces.

Draw a diagram showing the direction of the forces (maybe using an arrow)
Make sure you include all the forces

What happens if one person pushes with greater force than the other.

How could you show this on the diagram

Invent new situations, test them out and draw force diagrams to represent the forces involved.

Write down the rules for making and using force diagrams

RULES FOR MAKING FORCE DIAGRAMS

In order to show the direction in which a force acts.............................

In order to show the size of the force .....................................

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APPENDIX 5
ED382035 May 95
We Can Talk: Cooperative Learning in the Elementary ESL Classroom. ERIC Digest.
Author: Kagan, Spencer

ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, Washington, D.C.

THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER. FOR MORE
INFORMATION ABOUT ERIC, CONTACT ACCESS ERIC 1-800-LET-ERIC

Language acquisition is determined by a complex interaction of a number of critical input, output, and context variables. An
examination of these critical variables reveals cooperative learning has a dramatic positive impact on almost all of the variables
critical to language acquisition.

INPUT
Language acquisition is fostered by input that is comprehensible, developmentally appropriate, redundant, and accurate.

"Comprehensible." To facilitate language acquisition, input must be comprehended (Krashen, 1982). Students working in
cooperative groups need to make themselves understood, so they naturally adjust their input to make it comprehensible. The
small group setting allows a far higher proportion of comprehensible input, because the speaker has the luxury of adjusting
speech to the level appropriate to the listener to negotiate meaning--luxury not available to the teacher speaking to a whole class.
The speakers can check for understanding and adjust the level of speech easily when speaking to one another, something not
easily done when speaking in a large group. Input in the cooperative setting is made comprehensible also because it is often
linked to specific, concrete behaviors or manipulatives.

"Developmentally Appropriate." Even if language is comprehended it will not stimulate the next step in language acquisition if it
is not in the zone of proximal development (Vygotsy, 1978). The developmental level of any student is what he or she can do
alone; the proximal level is what he/she can do with supportive collaboration. The difference between the developmental and
proximal levels is called the zone of proximal development. The nature of a cooperative group focuses input in the zone of
proximal development, stimulating development to the next stage of language development.

"Redundant." A student may receive comprehensible input in the zone of proximal development, but that will not ensure
language acquisition unless the input is received repeatedly from a variety of sources. The cooperative learning group is a natural
source of redundant communication. As the students in a small group discuss a topic, they each use a variety of phrases
providing the opportunity for the listener to triangulate in on meaning as well as receiving the repeated input necessary for
learning to move from short-term comprehension to long-term acquisition.
"Accurate." Accurate input--communication that is grammatically correct with proper word choice and pronunciation--facilitates
language acquisition. In this area, the traditional classroom may have an advantage over the cooperative classroom, because the
teacher is the source of most speech. Peer output is less accurate than teacher output, but accuracy in the traditional classroom is
purchased by preventing student output, a price far too high for what it purchases. Frequent communicative output produces
speech acquisition far more readily than formal accurate input.

OUTPUT
Language acquisition is fostered by output that is functional and communicative (Swain, 1985), frequent, redundant, and
consistent with the identity of the speaker.

"Functional/Communicative." If speech is not representative of the way a speaker will use the language in everyday settings, it
will add little to the speaker's actual communicative competence. Memorization of vocabulary lists or verb conjugations does not
increase fluency, because learning about a language is quite different from acquiring the language. Display behavior such as,
"The clock is on the wall," or "This is a glass," is not representative of actual speech, and practice of formal, de-contextualized
speech creates transference problems that hinder acquisition. The cooperative group provides the arena for expressive,
functional, personally relevant, representative language output that is critical for language acquisition.
"Frequent." Students to a large extent learn to speak by speaking. The single greatest advantage of cooperative learning over
traditional classroom organization for the acquisition of language is the amount of language output allowed per student. In the
traditional classroom, students are called upon one at a time. During this whole-class question-answer time, the teacher actually
does more talking than the students, because the teacher must talk twice for each time a student talks: first asking the question
and then providing feedback in the form of praise, comment, or correction opportunity. Thus, in a classroom of 30, to provide
each student one minute of output opportunity takes over an hour. In contrast, to provide each student one minute if the students
are in a pair-discussion takes little over two minutes. In the cooperative setting, with regard to language output, we can do in two
minutes what takes an hour to do in the traditional classroom!

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"Redundant." Students become fluent if they have the opportunity to speak repeatedly on the same topic. Many cooperative
learning structures, such as Three Pair Share and Inside/Outside Circle are explicitly designed to provide redundancy of output
opportunities. Even informal, cooperative learning discussion provides redundancy as students discuss a topic with each of their
teammates. There is not enough time in the traditional classroom to call on each student to talk more than once on a topic.

"Identity Congruent." Practicing classroom speech that is not consistent with a student's identity will not lead to later fluency,
because the student will not want to project the identity associated with that speech. Cultural groups will resist acquisition of the
dominant language if the very use of that language signals assimilation that is being resisted. The less formal, peer-oriented,
expressive use of language in the cooperative group represents language use closer to the identity of many students than the
formal use of language practiced in whole-class settings. The more identity-congruent language facilitates language acquisition.

CONTEXT
Language acquisition is fostered if it occurs in a context that is supportive and motivating, communicative and referential,
developmentally appropriate, and feedback rich.

"Supportive/Motivating." The traditional classroom is far from supportive as students are "right" or "wrong" as they are called
upon to answer questions before the whole class. Students in a cooperative group are more motivated to speak and feel greater
support for a variety of reasons:
(1) They are more frequently asked questions;
(2) they need to communicate to accomplish the cooperative learning projects;
(3) peers are far more supportive than in the traditional classroom because they are all on the same side;
(4) cooperative learning structures demand speech;
(5) students are taught to praise and encourage each other; and
(6) students are made interdependent so they need to know what the others know. Because of these factors, students "bring out"
their teammates, providing words or phrases to make speech inviting and easy.
Cooperative learning provides a supportive, motivating context for speech to emerge.

"Communicative/Referential." In cooperative learning groups, we communicate over things we are making. We speak in real
time, about real events and objects, to accomplish real goals. We negotiate meaning. Our communication that is functional refers
to what is happening in the moment. This communicative language facilitates language acquisition, and it is quite in contrast to
the abstract "talking about" topics that often characterize whole-class speech.
"Developmentally Appropriate." Some students are not ready to give a speech to a whole class but are quite at ease talking to
one, two, or even three others. Speech to a whole class is often formal and less contextualized than speech within a cooperative
group. It is easy to ask for a crayon from a friendly peer; it is hard to speak before the whole class in answering a question or
speaking on an assigned topic. Speakers within a small group have more opportunities to enter discourse at the level appropriate
to their own development.
"Feedback Rich." Students talk to each other, providing immediate feedback and correction opportunities. Feedback and
correction in the process of communication ("Give me that, "Sure, you take the ruler," etc.) leads to easy acquisition of
vocabulary and language forms, whereas formal correction opportunities ("What is this?" "This is a ruler," etc.) lead to self-
consciousness and anxiety, which inhibit rather than facilitate language acquisition.
In 20 minutes of whole-class, one-at-a-time interaction, a student is lucky to get one feedback opportunity; in the same 20
minutes of cooperative interaction, the student might receive half a dozen feedback opportunities--all in a natural context easy to
assimilate.

A NATURAL MARRIAGE
As we examine how cooperative learning transforms input, output, and context variables in the direction of facilitating language
acquisition, we conclude:
Cooperative learning and the ESL classroom--a natural marriage.

This Digest is reprinted from Elementary Education Newsletter (vol. 17, no. 2, Winter 1995), the official publication of the
ESOL in Elementary Education Interest Section of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages.

REFERENCES
Krashen, S.D. (1982). "Principles and practice in second language acquisition." Oxford, England: Pergamon.
Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input in its development. In S.M. Gass, &
C.G.Madden, (Eds.), "Input in second language acquisition" (pp. 235-53). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). "Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes" (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S.
Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds. & Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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