Cooperative Language Learning

Cooperative language learning:

Cooperative language learning is focused on the idea that teaching should make maximum use of cooperative activities and interactions. Fighting against older ideas that teaching should be teacher-fronted and that strong and weak students should be educated separately, cooperative language learning maintains that in cooperative group work students are likely to scaffold each other and therefore raise the language level of the class.

Cooperative Language Learning requires social interaction and negotiation of meaning among heterogeneous group members engaged in task in which all group members have both something to contribute to and learn from the other members.

Essential characteristics → have an impact on the affective nature of the language classroom.

* Positive Interdependence: Cooperative groups share a common goal. The success (or failure) of a cooperative group is dependent on the efforts of all of its individual members. Spirit of mutual understanding.

* Face-to-Face, group interaction: CLL has an emphasis on small group interaction: While some cooperative structures use pairs, a more typical group consists of 3-6 students, small enough to encourage all members to participate, but large enough to benefit from multiple ideas and roles of the individual members.

* Individual (and group) accountability: It’s encouraged through the assignment of specific roles or tasks, and individuals are held accountable for the success of each of the other members.

* Development of small group social skills: For Cooperative groups to succeed, individual members need to develop not only linguistic but also social skills. They need to learn how to work together as a team and how to help each other, assuming responsibility for their own and each other’s learning.

* Group processing: Besides engaging in group tasks, learners also need to reflect upon their group’s experiences. Through this processing, learners acquire or refine metacognitive and socio-affective strategies of monitoring, learning from others, and sharing ideas and turns.

Some cooperative activities:

Jigsaw: it’s the most widely known CLL activity used to create a real “information gap” in the classroom and encourage communication. Each member of the group has information which the others need in order to complete a task. But before students are asked to share the information, they are given the opportunity to work in “expert groups” with others researching the same topic or discussing the same text. When they feel sufficiently able to explain their portion to the rest of the group, they return to their home group and serve as the expert on their contribution.

Think/Pair/Share: It’s the most basic cooperative activity. In this activity, a question is posed or an issue is presented, and learners are given some time to reflect, take notes or engage in free writing before turning to another learner and sharing what they have just thought and written about. After sharing in pairs, the members of the pair share their ideas with the class.

Roundtable/Roundrobin: In both activities, students take turns giving answers, providing information or sharing ideas. In a Roundtable, students offer written contributions, sharing one piece of paper and a pencil and passing them so that each student provides a written contribution. In Roundrobin, the contributions are spoken. In both, turns continue until everyone has run out of ideas or time is called.

Numbered heads: In this activity, members of the group count off. Then a question is posed for the entire group to discuss. When they have developed a team answer and are certain that each member knows that answer, a number is called and students with that number are expected to answer the question. Each member of the group is expected to help the others to understand and be able to answer appropriately.

CL is gaining abroad acceptance in a multitude of language learning classrooms, principally because of its contributions to improving the overall climate of the classroom and its potential for the language. It creates a more positive affective climate in classroom, while it also individualizes instructions and raises student motivation. Some benefits are:

* Reducing anxiety: Fear of failing is a constant threat to interaction in the language classroom, especially when teachers ask questions