COOPERATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING

1
 COPERATIVE
LANGUAGE LEARNING
• Cooperative Language Learning (CLL) is part of a more general instructional approach also known
as Collaborative Learning (CL). CLL refers to a variety of teaching methods in which students work
in small groups to help one another and to accomplish shared learning goals. This means that
interaction within one heterogeneous group can lead to a maximum of language learning, if the
students work collaboratively. To do so, they have to use the L2 and share the idea of achieving a
common goal, which is not on the first side the learning the language, but solving the exercises.

• The approaches of this methods are from the theory of language is that communication as a primary
purpose of language and cooperative nature of language, and the theory of learning is that learners
develop communicative competence and critical thinking skills.
 THE GOALS OF CLL IN LANGUAGE
TEACHING :
• To provide opportunities for naturalistic second language acquisition through the
use of interactive pair and group activities.
• To provide teachers with a methodology to enable them to achieve this goal and one
that can be applied in a variety of curriculum settings (e.g., content-based, foreign
language classrooms).
• To enable focused attention to particular lexical items, language structures, and
communicative functions through the use of interactive tasks.
• To provide opportunities for learners to develop successful learning and
communication strategies
• To enhance learner motivation and reduce learner stress and to create a positive
affective classroom climate . 3
CHARACTERISTICS
To develop critical thinking skills and
Objective communicative competence through socially
structured interaction activities

Active participator, individual needs, and learning

Learner roles centered. Director, member.

Organizer and counselor of group work, facilitator of

Teacher roles the communication tasks, intervener to teach
collaborative skills.

Materials are arranged according to purpose of

Materials lesson. Usually one group shares a complete set of
materials.

4
 CLL doesn’t assume any particular form of
Syllabus language. It is an alternative to teacher-fronted
teaching.

Types of activities Task, group work and sharing session.

Room arrangement Moving to create collaborative small groups.

All members in some way contribute to success of

Student expectations
group.

Teacher-student relationship Cooperating and equal.

5 KEY ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL GROUP-
BASED LEARNING IN CLL
1.Positive interdependence : Group members realize that their success is linked with each
other. It means building a spirit of mutual support within the group.
2.Group formation : Creating positive interdependence by deciding size of the group,
assigning students to groups, and make sure students participate in the group.
3.Individual accountability : The performance of each individual is assessed and the results
are given back to the group and the individual in order to determine who needs more
assistance, support, and encouragement in learning.
4.Social skills : The way students interact with each other as teammates.
5.Structuring and Structures : The ways of organizing students interaction. The teachers can
enable students different interaction ways in the group.
6
 JIGSAW
• Jigsaw Teaching was developed by Slavin ( 1995); group mates share information
with each other in this technique. This is a useful activity to teach reading. Slavin
summarized the procedure to apply Jigsaw II as:
• Students receive expert topics and read assigned material to locate
information.
• Students with the same expert topics meet to discuss them in expert
groups.
• Experts return to their team to teach their topics to their teammates.
• Students share infront of class.
 ROUND TABLE
• Round Table can be used for brainstorming, reviewing, or practicing. In this method,
each group member has a designated turn to participate and make a written
contribution to the group’s project. The group has a writing prompt, task, or question
(Kagan, 1994). Sequential form as following:
• The teacher asks a question which has multiple answers, each student
writes a response or a portion of a response.
• After writing their response, they pass the paper to the next person.
• Round Table can be down with one piece of paper per group or with one
piece of paper per group member.
• One group member may be asked to share with the whole class what their
group has written.
 THINK-PAIR-SHARE
• Think-Pair-Share was proposed by Lyman (1981). This teaching method could
encourage students to communicate with others and develop thinking. There are the
steps of Think-Pair-Share.
• The teacher poses a discussion topic or an open-ended question.
• The teacher gives students the “think time” to think on their own.
• After thinking, students work in pairs to share their ideas with each
other.
• Students share their responses with other partners or with the rest of the
class.
 ADVANTAGES / DISADVANTAGES
Comfortable in small groups because students teach If teacher selects group randomly and there is a
one another and explain material in their own words. group with weak students may not work well
together.

Students help each other finish the task. The classroom will be noisy.

Allow teachers to pull individual or group ability It is difficult for the teacher to be sure that the groups
because teacher monitoring them during cooperative are discussing the academic content rather than
learning. something else.

Sharing session makes all students understand the task. Lesson planning and preparation can take longer.

03.09.20XX 10
 COOPERATIVE LANGUAGE LEARNING

• Cooperative language learning is based on the idea that second language

learning can be best done in heterogeneous groups, when all students work
collaboratively and cooperatively for one common goal. It replaces the idea
that students have to work competitively against one another.
• On the contrary, it rather supports the idea Vygotski claimed in his
Sociocultural Theory, which states that “Interaction not only facilitates
language learning but is a causative force in acquisition.”
• Vygostki was of the opinion that social interaction is seen as the only way of
learning a language sufficiently and therefore he came up with his idea of
the zone of proximal development (ZPD), “an area of potential development,
where the learner can achieve that potential only with assistance”
 THEORY OF LEARNING
• As already stated, the theories of Vygotski and Piaget can be seen as setting the
base of cooperative language learning. As shown in the premise, social
interaction is maintained to be necessary for language learning and thus
corresponds perfectly with the principles of cooperative language learning. In
working cooperatively, students share the idea of working together and achieving
a common goal.
• Every member of the group has different ideas and skills and in sharing them
with the others, the group can take a maximal profit out of it all. Furthermore,
different skills mean that every member of the group has the chance to participate
and so every group member is important for the success of the group work. The
emphasis of this approach is on cooperative work rather than on competitive
work.