马榕 深圳南山松坪学校 518057
Abstract: As Cooperative Language Learning is a common way in nowadays English teaching and there are many benefits from using cooperative learning, the primary goal of this study is to investigate the effects of cooperative learning activities in English classes on second grade students’ English learning skills and attitudes in a primary school in Shenzhen. The study attempted to answer two questions. The implication of the study is that this study could help to find out students’ perceptions towards these activities in class as well as the perceived difficulties during the applications of cooperative activities。
Keywords: cooperative learning activities, primary English classes, perceived difficulties
中图分类号：G688.2 文献标识码：A 文章编号：ISSN1672-2051 （2020）02-125-01
Chapter Ⅰ Introduction
1.1 Research Background
Cooperative learning, which was first put forward in 1970s, has antecedents in proposals for peer-tutoring and peer-monitoring, as well as being recognized as one of the main modern teaching approaches. Cooperative learning has been substantially refined and developed since then with the result that it became the most important and successful teaching reform in last decade. Cooperative learning has been embraced as a way of promoting communicative interaction in the classroom and is seen as an extension of the principles of Communicative Language Teaching.
However, it is hard to find an extremely successful instructional lesson in China today. The traditional English classes, which mainly focus on grammatical competence, are being to blame. How students interact with each another is a neglected aspect of instruction.
Thus, it is necessary to find out more about students’ attitudes and feelings toward the newly employing cooperative activities in English classes and the difficulties of learning and teaching through cooperative activities to help them achieve better in further learning.
1.2 Research Question
In order to achieve the goal of the study to find out how the effects of cooperative activities on the second grade students' English learning skills and attitudes, the study attempted to answer the following questions:
1). What are students’ perceptions towards these activities in class?
2). What are the perceived difficulties in the applications of cooperative activities?
Chapter Ⅱ Literature Review
In order to carry out effective lessons by using cooperative learning, there are five key elements that need to be considered: 1) Positive interdependence; 2) Individual accountability; 3) Group processing; 4) Face-to-face interaction; 5) Small-group and interpersonal skills. Among numerous concepts of cooperative learning, positive interdependence and individual accountability have been viewed as two most crucial elements that contribute to successful cooperative learning implementation .
When considering about individual accountability, it involves both group and individual performance. Within each group, all group mates need to reach an agreement on goals, and for each individual member, they need to understand what one should do to achieve the goal.
Chapter Ⅲ Methodology
3.1Context
Shenzhen, as a pioneer of the Reform and Opening Policy, has been influenced by new thoughts since early 1980s. Nanshan District, where Songping primary School is located, is the precursory innovator of education within the city. Several progressive schools even adopted authentic teaching materials from Hong Kong early in the late 1990s (for example, Longman).
Songping Primary School is an upper middle level primary school in Shenzhen. In addition, the enrolled students and the teachers are normal and, importantly, typical in this city.
3.2Questionnaire Participants and Interview Participants
Considering the cooperative learning levels and study motivation of students, it should be better that the higher level classes were chosen as participating group. Two of the second grade classes had been chosen as subjects.
86 students of the whole two classes participated in the questionnaire part. 42 of them were males and 44 were females. The age ranged from 7 to 8. These students had all had more than one years of English learning experience in primary school.
Table 1: Background of interview subjects
(* M: male; F: female;
The standard of the English proficiency: A=average 95-100 during the last semester, B=average 85-94 during the last semester, C=average 75-84 during the last semester)
3.3Classroom Observation and Questionnaire
Observing classroom during the lessons could be the most intuitional way for recording teaching procedures. The teachers’ ways of organizing cooperative activities and the students’ responses had been required to be noted.
In order to collect data of the students’ universal attitudes or tendencies towards cooperative activities, one of the major instruments the researcher adopted was questionnaire (Appendix A). It helped to get an overall understanding of the current situation of the subjects.
3.4 Procedures of Conducting Questionnaire Survey and Interview
All the subjects had given back questionnaires within 8 minutes. All the questionnaires that the researcher has collected were valid.
During the interview, the researcher first posted some predetermined questions then following up some questions according to the subjects’ answers.
Chapter Ⅳ Results
The collecting rate of the questionnaire was 100%. According to the students’ responds in the questionnaires, the students’ perceptions towards these activities in class could be found out.
4.1Findings from the Classroom Observation
In EFL classroom in primary school, students forming teams for structured activities to achieve a common goal is the most common way to adopt Cooperative Language Learning Approach. They are individually accountable for their task, and the task of the entire group. Members of cooperative teams work together and have clearly defined roles. As classroom observation had been adopted as a supplementary means to evaluate the quantity and quality of cooperative activities in EFL classroom, the teaching methods had been taken down by the teachers below:
1.The teacher changed classrooms' seating arrangement. The whole class, with 43 students, was divided into 11 groups, each group had four students, and the last group had three students (the teacher paid more attention to this group). Seating arrangement was as figure 1. (Li Lanying, teacher)
Figure 1: Seating arrangement
The writer thinks it can maximize communication and influence among the students, as well as strengthen the relationships, which can also promote the group activities.
2.According to the summary of the students' comprehensive performance of the last semester, each one was placed in heterogeneous teams with other three to keep the balance between the groups. (Zhou Guiping, the teacher in charge of the class)
The researcher also paid attention to the collocation of the team members in gender, interests and abilities.
3.The students paired up and compiled a list of their ideas. Each pair would then share with the whole class until all the ideas have been recorded and discussed. (Xian Huan, teacher)
Think-Pair-Share gives time to everyone in the class to access prior knowledge and provides a chance for them to share their ideas with others. It helps students to organize their knowledge and motivates learning of new topics.
This is a fast and fun way to take visual notes, foster creativity, stretch students' visual thinking skills, make learning contextual and meaningful, as well as promote active involvement with the learning content. Besides, it is a way to check whether the students had memorized the new knowledge or not. Pairs of students may create their own mind map or they may simultaneously add to the team and/or class mind map. This kind of group work also pushes the students to cooperate with each other by allocating tasks.
4.2Findings from the Questionnaire
After the data of questionnaires had been collected, the author used Excel to help to analyze the data as Table 2.
Table 2: Data of questionnaires
It is clear to perceive the students’ attitudes towards these activities in class from Table 3.
Table 3: Analysis of questionnaires
The data result demonstrated that the majority of the two classes were interested in English, whereas there were still some students who did not like English. The percentages of students who disliked English accounted for 19.24%. There were same amount of the students who were excited and who felt just so-so towards English lessons, adding to 80.76%, while 19.24% students saw English lesson as bored napping time. When the students were asked about whether enjoying the experimental English lessons or not, the data changed to positive that 48.07% students said yes, 40.38% students considered the changing was better, and only 9.62% students preferred the original.
The most significant question was the last one that asking about whether they like this kinds of cooperative activities in their lesson or not, 86.16% student agreed that they welcomed this type of lessons so much that they welcomed it not only be shown as English lessons, but other lessons, and only a few students disagreed. These questions illustrated the result of applying cooperative activities in English class was not so understandable or effective. However, this type of lesson was welcomed by most of the students.
4.3Findings from the Interview
Interview part was composed of five questions and intended to review some possible difficulties that the students met with in English class, especially in cooperative activities.
Table4: Perceived difficulties in English learning and cooperative activities
While in the first question of the interview, only one participant, who was younger and did well in her study, showing her arrogance, announced that she hated the cooperative activities arranged in class for lacking the opportunity of showing herself, other interviewees expressed their favor and interest in this cooperative learning activities and they preferred different group mates with different characteristic and specialties. Also, in question 2, all of the students agreed that the teacher was needed as instructor and friend to play the cooperative activities. Some notes of the students’ following answers and the teachers’ comments are taken down below:
1.I am not interested in these cooperative activities because I think I am the cleverest student in the class that if I combined a group with other students, my performance would be worse. As my mother told me that I would be the best...(Lilly Lin, student)
2.I enjoyed playing games (cooperative activities) with you. Some strict teacher would never allow we did these in class so I would start to talk with my friends or make fun with the teacher because the class was boring...(Michael Xiao, student)
3.I usually feel panic when I have to talk to others in English. I am quite good at grammar, but I just kept making mistakes when I start speaking in English. So I tend to talk less during the discussions or in front of the class...(Angelia Cheng, student)
The qualitative content analysis conducted on the interview suggested that there were mainly six individual and six environmental factors that contribute to English majors’ involvement in cooperative activities in EFL classroom, which as presented in Figure 2, supported by the interviewees’ statements translated by the writer and the teachers’ analysis.
Figure 2: Factors contributing to involvement in cooperative activities in EFL classroom
From the above resource of comments, it can be simply concluded that the class design is a crucial factor, if teachers can carry out a suitable lesson design, it would be easier to apply Cooperative Language Learning Approach.
Chapter Ⅴ Conclusion
5.1 Main Findings of This Study
Students’Perceptions towards These Activities in Class. After the analysis of questionnaire and interview, the results show that the generally students’ perceptions towards these activities in class are positive. Despite most of the students still cannot agree to the importance of the cooperative activities or the cooperative activities were still not so meaningful enough for the students, they presented enormous welcome to this kinds of lessons with cooperative activities.
After interviews and investigations of questionnaire, difficulties in the applications of cooperative activities are shown in followings:
1) Time and class management. Cooperative learning needs teachers to spend more time on explanation of group work, and primary students, especially younger ones may not be able to understand the contents by explaining once, thus the time cost may beyond teachers’ control. As a result, teachers who are planned to have a cooperative learning lesson, need to spend more time on controlling classes rather than teaching or facilitating cooperative learning or they are less likely to finish the teaching plans as they expected.
2) Lesson design. For cooperative learning, lesson plans are very important. To make sure the effectiveness of the cooperative learning lessons, teachers need much experience in conducting classes and be familiar with students’ characters.
3) Students’ performance. Primary school students are more likely to complain and have conflicts with each other especially during group competitions, so that during group discussions, some incidents always happen. In this kind of situation, cooperative learning would hinder teaching rather than facilitating. Teachers need to teach the students how to get along with each other, not only the knowledge from textbooks.
4) Collective participation. This is one of the most significant points to achieve the goal of cooperative learning. As there are too many students in a class, it is hard for teachers to get access to every group or every student so that students are not able to receive help immediately or be concerned comprehensively.
5.2Suggestions
As Cooperative Language Learning is a common way in nowadays English teaching and there are many benefits from using Cooperative Language Learning. Teachers should pay more attention to prepare the classes with cooperative activities. Firstly, practice this method more often before class. After learning different branches and approaches of cooperative learning, teachers could practice designing teaching plans so as to help teachers be familiar with different kinds of approaches in cooperative learning and master some essentials and key elements of cooperative learning to know what ways are more appropriate in some certain situation. Secondly, as it is not easy to realize the effectiveness of cooperative learning, it is necessary for teachers to believe the magical benefits of group works. Thus, when they apply Cooperative Language Learning Approach, teachers would be more confident and with more positive attitudes to control the whole exciting class. Thirdly, students’ keep each other on tasks and sha re a sense of accomplishment building motivation and make them learn an enjoyable experience, which appeals topics of more creative and valuable to talk. Fourthly, an evaluation system is needed. By building an effective evaluation system, teachers can know more about their students' strong points and drawbacks in cooperative activities which may help them form a better and effective group.
REFERENCES
Chiu, M. (2004). Adapting teacher interventions to student needs during cooperative learning. American Educational Research Journal, 41, 365-399.
Deutsch, M. (1962). Cooperation and trust: Some theoretical notes. In M. R. Jones (Ed.).
Johnson, R., and Holubec, E. 1994. Cooperative Learning in the Classroom. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
McCafferty, G., Jacobs, M., and Iddings, D. (2006). Cooperative Learning and Second Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 275-320。