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A very common problem is that there is usually low participation among the students during the speaking lessons; meanwhile, whenever working in groups, some members always assert their d

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Students’ on-task behavior

Table 2: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 1

Table 3: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 2

Table 4: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 3

Table 5: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 4

Table 6: The most common categories of students’ interactions before and during the CL

activities

TABLE OF CONTENT

CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2

ABSTRACT 3

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 4

LIST OF TABLES 5

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 8

1 A review of related researches 8

2 Rationale 10

3 Objectives of the study 11

4 Research questions 11

5 Significance of the study 11

6 Scope of the study 11

7 Methods of the study 12

8 Organization of the study 12

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 13

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 13

1.1 Cooperative Learning 13

1.1.1 Definitions of cooperative learning 13

1.1.2 Principles of cooperative learning 14

1.2 Cooperative language learning (CLL) 17

1.2.1 Goals of CLL 17

1.2.2 Advantages of CLL 18

1.2.3 Design of CLL 18

1.3 Speaking skill 20

1.3.1 Nature of speaking 20

1.3.2 Classroom speaking performance 21

1.3.3 Speaking activities 22

CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH 24

2.1 Research methods 24

2.1.1 Subjects of the research 24

2.1.2 Procedure of the research 24

2.1.3 Instrumentation and data collection 27

2.2 Data Analysis 28

2.2.1 Data analysis procedure 28

2.2.2 Data analysis results 29

2.3 Discussion of the research questions 36

2.3.1 What are the effects of CL on students’ participation in the group activities? 36

2.3.2 What are the students’ attitudes towards CL? 38

CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATIONS 40

3.1 The CL training and implementation plan 40

3.2 Dealing with the problems of CL application 42

3.3 Teachers’ awareness of their roles in CL lessons 42

PART 3: CONCLUSION 44

1 The achievement of the objectives of the study 44

2 The effectiveness of the methods and instruments used 44

3 Limitations of the study 45

4 Suggestions for further studies 46

REFERENCES 47

APPENDICES Error! Bookmark not defined.- VII

PART 1: INTRODUCTION

Cooperative Learning (CL) has interested thousands of researchers all over the world as one of the educational innovations which has the best and largest empirical base With a view to realizing its effectiveness in encouraging the students to speak in class, the researcher has set herself two tasks for a review of literature: finding out the benefits of CL and how well it has been integrated in English speaking lessons

a) Benefits of cooperative learning

The benefits of cooperative learning have been proved by researchers Many of researches have come to generally positive conclusions about its academic benefits in that cooperative learning has been shown to help improve student’s learning and re-vitalize teaching methods (Johnson, Johnson & Stanne, 2000) Researchers have also concluded that students who learn in groups develop intercultural understanding (Slavin, 1990), interpersonal skills (Johnson & Johnson, 2000), and that they are better prepared for the modern participative workplace (Feichtner & Davis, 1991) Cooperative learning is also seen as essential preparation for participating in a democratic society (Kagan, 1994)

In comparison with competitive and individualistic approaches, cooperative learning has been proved to be more effective instructional method (Johnson et al., 2000) To be more specific, apart from better academic outcomes, cooperative learning has been demonstrated

to benefit students from developing critical thinking skills (Brandon & Hollingshead, 1999), developing creative thinking ability (Johnson et al.,1994) and enhancing social skills such as communication, presentation, problem-solving, leadership, delegation and organization (Cheng & Warren, 2000) According to Slavin, cooperative learning also helps solve teachers’ instructional problems

However, Slavin (1995) notices that cooperative learning only benefits students when cooperative learning strategies are held properly; Otherwise, they would decrease students’ academic achievement Other researchers also realize the importance of CL strategies in designing and carrying out CL activities successfully Some of them will be discussed in the next part, which provides a basic theoretical background for the study

b) CL in teaching speaking skill

With regard to teaching an EFL speaking course in the world, few researches have been

found on the implementation of CL in developing students’ speaking ability Tamaela, J

C (2009) examines the effects of CL activities in teaching speaking skill to an SMA Negeri 1 class in Malang, Indonesia She comes to a conclusion that CL enables the students to participate to work as a team and when working in CL groups, students are

supported to speak up Galit, D (2006) confirms that the combination of CL and authentic

materials promotes speaking in small groups in an EFL class

In Vietnam, the implementation of CL in teaching speaking skill has recently interested teachers and researchers Hoang Thi Lan (2005) applied CL to develop speaking skill of the first year EFL students at Vinh University, and Le Thi Bich Thuy (2006) carried out an action using CL with her second-year students at Gia Lai Teacher Training College These studies have proven the effectiveness of CL in improving students’ speaking ability Regarding the situation of Vietnamese high schools where CL has been recently applied, the results from a research done by Phi Thanh Tra (2006) show that although CL has been employed with a view to improving students’ speaking competence, it is quite simple in terms of groups and activities and the teachers have not explored and applied all aspects of

CL That leads to a fact that the students have not been motivated to put it in action even though they have realized the advantages of CL in speaking lessons Therefore, in order to have a successful CL lesson, teachers play a very important role Pham Thi Hong Thanh (2008) examined perceptions of the respective roles and responsibilities of Vietnamese teachers as one of the constraints against cooperative learning She argues that cooperative learning has failed to replace the traditional teaching and learning approach at Vietnamese higher education institutions partly because Vietnamese teachers are not happy to transfer their roles as a knowledge transmitter to a learning facilitator as cooperative learning requires

Despite the growing interest of teachers and researchers in CL, few articles or studies have been especially devoted to enhancing students’ participation in a speaking lesson The researcher, therefore, has made up her mind to examine how CL group activities may help

to enhance the students’ participation in her own teaching context

2 Rationale

The very first reason why the researcher carries out the study on group work comes from her own teaching experience During the three years’ working as a teacher of the speaking skill for the English majors, the researcher has failed to organize students to work effectively in groups Having realized the advantages group work may have on students’ learning, the researcher has tried to put the students in groups and tell them to cooperate; however, it has not worked so far A very common problem is that there is usually low participation among the students during the speaking lessons; meanwhile, whenever working in groups, some members always assert their dominance over others in any group activity This is due to the fact that students at Thành Đô University, a very new private one, have mixed levels of speaking abilities, and they have little chance to use the language Many of them are shy to speak out during the speaking activities, and thus, the better ones speak a lot while the weaker say little or nothing at all In search of a better strategy of structuring group work, the researcher happened to read some books and articles about cooperative learning and the implementation of its principles in structuring groups to improve students’ learning The researcher has found that simply putting students in groups does not mean cooperation will occur, and that how teachers organize group work affects students’ participation in group activities

With an interest in CL and a hope to apply it to enhance the students’ participation in speaking classes, a deeper review of literature has been made by the researcher The above review of hundreds of researches on CL and its effectiveness in improving students’ learning in general and speaking skill in particular has given the researcher good reasons to take CL into implementation The success of CL programmes by many teachers in the world and in Vietnam has encouraged the researcher to carry out such a programme in her class Moreover, though a lot of CL implementing programmes have been carried out, few have been particularly done for an increase in students’ participation in speaking activities For all these reasons, the researcher would really like to do a research on “Using cooperative learning principles in structuring groups to enhance participation in speaking lessons of second-year college students of English at Thanh Do University”

3 Objectives of the study

In realizing the study, the main objectives are:

 To investigate the effects of CL on students’ participation in oral activities

 To examine the students’ attitude towards the new way of learning speaking skill

With those aims, my research questions along with sub-questions are:

1) What are the effects of CL on students’ participation in the group activities?

 Are the students motivated to participate?

 Is the amount of the students’ participation increased and divided equally?

 Is the nature of the students’ participation improved?

2) What are the student’s attitudes towards CL?

The study is conducted to prove the hypothesis that CL may help to enhance students’ participation in speaking classes The first and foremost aim, therefore, is for the sake of the students Besides, it is hoped that the study will help to better the researcher’s own teaching of the English speaking skill, and also to serve as a source of reference for the colleagues at Thanh Do University and those who are concerned with CL

Within the scope of an individual teacher research, the researcher has no ambition to cover all aspects of CL and all the students as well The study is only focused on the effectiveness of CL in improving the participation in speaking lessons of the second year students of the Foreign Language Department at Thanh Do University The subjects are 21 second year college students of the Department The activities are selected and designed from the main course book “React & Interact” by Byrd D.R.H& Clemente I.C – Longman

as well as the CL structures proposed by Dr Spencer Kagan (Kagan online) The data collection and analysis are based on classroom observation, the journals written by the students and informal interviews carried out during the first semester from September 2009

to January 2010 As this is an individual teacher research, the researcher is responsible for all the data collection and analysis She gets assistance from a colleague at the Department with the class observation

The researcher employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to get the most realistic and reliable panorama of the teaching action Quantitative analysis is involved in the process of data collection and analysis via the information provided by the two observation forms Meanwhile, qualitative analysis is employed to get an insight into the subjects of the study (their learning attitudes, the improvement of participation and oral communication skills developed) through their journals, the informal talks and the observation sheets as well Hopefully, the study will yield beneficial results for the teaching and learning of speaking skill in the future

The study is divided into three main parts The following shows the content covered in each part:

Part A is the Introduction It presents a review of related researches, explains the rationale

of the study, the objectives, the research questions, scope and significance as well as the methods and organization of the study

Part B is the Development of the study and is comprised of three chapters Chapter 1 presents the necessary theoretical background to the study Chapter 2 describes the process

of carrying out the study, including collecting data, analyzing data, drawing findings and discussing research questions Chapter 3 provides some pedagogical implications and suggestions for further studies

Part C is the Conclusion of the study

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT

1.1.1 Definitions of cooperative learning

Over the past twenty years, different approaches to cooperative learning have been developed by different individuals Therefore, CL takes various forms and definitions Following are some of the definitions by the most famous scholars:

Dr Spencer Kargan (1994) proposes a definition on CL as “group learning activity organized so that learning is dependent on socially structured exchange of information between learners in group and in which each learner is held accountable for his or her own learning and is motivated to increase learning of others.” Jacobs (1997) generalizes ideas emerged now and then in a definition that captures the spirit of CL According to him, CL

is a body of concepts and techniques for helping to maximize the benefits of cooperation among students in education In other words, CL provides language teachers with essential concepts of heterogeneous classes, learner cooperation and mutual help in learning; and it equips teachers with effective instructional techniques to exploit cooperation in language learning classes

In his recent definition, Johnson (2001) defines CL as a general term for an instructional approach that “emphasizes the conceptual learning and the development of social skills as learners work together in small heterogeneous groups.” The idea of CL is described in a very simple way like this: class members are organized in small groups after receiving instructions from the teacher; they then work through the assignment until all the group members successfully understand and complete it All their cooperative efforts help to strive for mutual benefit so that all group members gain from each other’s efforts, recognizing that they all share a common fate…No on group member possesses all the information, skills or resources needed for the highest possible quality result

Although stated variously, definitions of CL basically falls into three major points: Firstly,

CL is said to be a strategy where students work together in small learning group, helping each other to accomplish individual and group tasks CL encourages responsibility among

groupmates as each member is not only in charge of his own learning but also of other teammates’ learning Secondly, CL is recognized as a method of instruction that promotes the learner’s development of high-order levels of thinking, essential communication skills, improved motivation, positive self-esteem, social awareness, and tolerance for individual differences in group activities This characteristic differentiates CL from its ancestor named Group work Group work has students work in groups to do tasks There may exist uneven participation of group members as one or two better students may dominate the work while CL strains interdependence and individual accountability among learners in group, which helps to stick students to the mutual work Lastly, the CL process also helps

to build students’ understanding of a few concepts maintaining Content-based tasks designed in the light of CL give learners, especially the lower level ones, opportunities to raise the voice confidently with their reservoir of world knowledge

In general, we can simply understand that cooperative learning is referred to as any variety

of teaching methods in which students work in small groups to help one another learn academic content As there have been different views on CL, various principles have been put forward in the CL literature Eight guiding CL principles as long with how they can inform teaching practice will be discussed in the next section

1.1.2 Principles of cooperative learning

a) Heterogeneous grouping

CL groups in which students do CL tasks are the mixed clusters of students with on or some variables including sex, religion, ethnicity, personality, age, social class, language proficiency and diligence Heterogeneous grouping is believed to have a number of benefits in comparison with homogeneous grouping, such as making peer-tutoring more likely to happen, providing a variety of perspectives or helping students get to know and learn tolerance to others’ differences

In order to achieve heterogeneous groups for speaking activities, teachers may want to look

at their class and make conscious decisions about such things as which students should work together, and how different the levels of students in groups should be, rather than leaving the matter to chance or to students’ choice

Choosing suitable group size is also an important factor to conduct group work effectively Chen (2004) suggests that groups of three or four likely work best; sometimes larger group, of from five to ten, are expected to give good results in big tasks where enormous human resource and the variety of people in terms of skills, background knowledge, etc are required

b) Collaborative skills

Collaborative skills are those interpersonal and cooperative abilities students need to work with others effectively Most books on collaborative skills suggest that they be explicitly taught one at a time, however, which to teach depends on particular students and tasks that the skill instruction intends to be combined in Some of the many skills important to successful collaboration are: checking that others understand, asking for and giving reasons, disagreeing politely and responding politely to disagreement and encouraging others to participate and responding to encouragement to participate

c) Group autonomy

This principle encourages students to look to themselves for resources rather than relying solely on the teacher Roger Johnson writes in his article: “Teachers must trust peer interaction to do many of the things they have felt responsible for themselves.” When student working groups are in difficulty, teachers must resist their temptation to help, let them try helping themselves Teachers may sometimes intervene, but intervention should not always be the first option

d) Simultaneous interaction (Kagan, 1994)

In traditional classroom, where no group activities are used, the normal interaction pattern

is like this: one person speaks at a time – usually the teacher, and occasionally a student who is called to answer a question or so This sequential structure is seriously disastrous in communicative language classes as they leave too little time per student for active participation In contrast, the use of small group work gives learners room to learn actively and engage to the negotiation of meaning with others The smaller the size of groups is, the more students will speak at the same time This CL principle is called Simultaneous Interaction

Even when groups are used, it is common at the end of a group activity for teachers to bring groups together as the whole class; then it might be the time for group report done by group representatives, for teacher’s evaluation of the group work and teacher’s revision of the main points discussed When this takes place, we are back to sequential interaction Thus, scholars urge that successful practical education in CL classes require teachers to combine simultaneous and sequential interaction in a flexible way

e) Equal participation

Researchers affirm that students learn by interacting with the content and with fellow students, and participation is an essential ingredient for student success, and equal participation is an essential ingredient for the success of all students But a frequent problem in groups is that one or two group members dominate the group and, for what reason, impede the participation of others CL offers many ways of promoting equal participation in groups, such as assigning and rotating roles among group members – they take turn to be facilitator, checker, questioner, encourager …; and using multiple ability tasks (Cohen, 1994), i.e the tasks that require a range of abilities, such as drawing, acting, singing, rather than only language abilities

f) Individual accountability

Individual accountability is said to be the flip side of equal participation, since it is hard to maintain equal participation in groups if there is no Individual accountability among group members When we encourage equal participation in groups, we try to make everyone feel that they have opportunities to take part in group work The Individual accountability principle helps to avoid problems in group work such as sleeping partners, social loafing or hanging around

Techniques for encouraging Individual accountability include giving each group member a designated turn to participate in small-sized groups, calling on students at random to share their group’s ideas to check the group work and having a task to be done individually at the end of the group activity In an open, friendly accommodating atmosphere with a number

of fellow classmates, learners are found more accountable for their learning and group common tasks

g) Positive interdependence

This principle lies at the heart of CL theory When Positive interdependence exists among group members, they feel that they are helping themselves by helping others, and that what hurts one member of the group hurts the other members It is the “All for one, one for all” feeling that keeps the members staying on group tasks and creates the wish to help each other to share a common goal

Johnson & Johnson (1998) suggest nine things teachers should establish to promote Positive interdependence Six of them are: (1) A group mutual goal to achieve; (2) A warm and friendly environment; (3) Assigned roles to group members as leader, reporter, time reminder, etc; (4) Shared resources; (5) External challenges (e.g: references, websites) for long-staying groups to improve group dynamics; and (6) Joint rewards

In order to encourage Positive interdependence in groups, teachers should give careful thought before putting students in groups If they cannot do this, there possibly occurs no interdependence or negative interdependence among group members instead of the desired positive one

h) Cooperation as a value

This principle means that rather than cooperation being only a way to learn – the “how” of learning, it also becomes part of the content to be learned – the “what” of learning While doing language tasks, students get to know the concept of cooperation and the organization

of group work themselves

We have just looked at the definitions and some major principles of CL In the next section, the theory of CL in second language learning and teaching will be presented This will serve as a reference for us in the implementation of CL in teaching speaking skill

1.2.1 Goals of CLL

In second language teaching, CL is seen as a way of promoting communicative interaction

in the classroom, thus it is considered to be an extension of the principles o f communicative language teaching

Richards and Rodgers (2001) propose five goals of cooperative learning in language teaching: (a) to provide opportunities for naturalistic second language acquisition through the use of interactive pair and group activities; (b) to provide teachers with a methodology

to enable them to achieve this goal which can be applied in a variety of curriculum settings; (c) to provide opportunities for learners to develop successful learning and communication strategies; (d) to enhance learners’ motivation and reduce learners’ stress and to create a positive affective classroom climate; (e) to enable focused attention to particular lexical items, language structures, and communicative functions through the use

of interactive task

1.2.2 Advantages of CLL

From the perspective of second language teaching, CLL offers six learning advantages for ESL students: (a) Increase frequency and variety of second language practice through different types of interaction; (b) Opportunities to integrate language with content-based instruction; (c) Possibility for development or use of language in ways that support cognitive development and increase language skills; (d) Opportunities to include a greater variety of curricular materials to stimulate language as well as concept learning; (e) Freedom for teachers to master professional skills, particularly those which emphasize communication; (f) Opportunities for students to act as resources for each other, thus assuming a more active role in learning

b) The syllabus

As CL can be used to teach activities from a variety of curriculum orientations, CLL does not have any particular form of language syllabus We can find CLL used in teaching content classes, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, ESP and the four skills

c) Roles of the teacher

Teacher’s role in CLL is considerably different from that in traditional lessons A very important role of the teacher in CLL classroom is that of facilitator of learning As a facilitator, the teacher has to move around the class helping the students and groups as needs arise Other things the teacher must do are: creating a highly structured and well-organized learning environment in the classroom, setting goals, planning and structuring tasks, establishing the physical arrangements of the classroom, assigning students to groups and roles, and selecting materials and time

d) Roles of the learner

The primary role of the learner is as a member of a group who must work collaboratively

on tasks with other group members Therefore, learners have to learn teamwork skills They are also directors of their own learning They are taught to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning CLL requires their direct and active involvement and participation Pair grouping is the most typical CLL format, ensuring the maximum amount

of time both learners spend on learning tasks

e) Learning and teaching activities

Types of learning and teaching activities are of great importance to the design of CLL Three main ones the teacher may use are:

 Formal cooperative learning groups: these activities are used for specific tasks and involve students working together to achieve shared learning goals These may last from one period to several weeks

 Informal cooperative learning groups: this type of activities just lasts a few minutes

or a class period, and is used to focus students’ attention or to facilitate learning during direct teaching

 Cooperative base groups: activities of this type consist of heterogeneous groups with stable membership The main purpose of these activities is to allow group members to give each other support, encouragement needed to be academically successful These are long term, lasting for at least one semester or a year

f) Role of instructional materials

Materials play an important part in creating opportunities for students to work cooperatively CLL does not require a different material from other types of lessons, but variations in the way the materials are used are a must Materials may be especially designed for CLL lessons, modified from existing materials, or borrowed from other disciplines

1.3.1 Nature of speaking

According to Brown and Yule (1993), spoken language consists of short, often fragmentary utterances, in a range of pronunciations There is often a great deal of repetition and overlap between one speaker and another, and speakers frequently use non-specific references (e.g “it”, “thing”, “this”, “that”…) In spoken language, the use of non-specific words and phrases, the loosely organized syntax and the use of fillers such as

“well”, “u huh” or “oh” make it less conceptually dense than other types of language The two authors propose a basic distinction when considering the development of speaking skill is between monologue and dialogue The ability to give an uninterrupted oral presentation is quite distinct from interacting with one or more speakers for transactional and interactional purposes, the two basic language functions They suggest that most language teaching is concerned with developing skills in short, interactional exchanges in which the learner is only required to make one or two utterances at a time They also state that “students who are only capable of producing short turns are going to experience a lot

of frustration when try to speak foreign language” since the ability to express on a given subject to a group of listeners is a skill that has to be learned and practiced

Littlewood (1992) also examined the nature of spoken language He is mostly concerned with the lack of transfer from the practice of motor-perceptive skills to genuine

communicative interaction He points out that successful oral communication involves the development of: (a) The ability to articulate phonological features of the language comprehensibly; (b) Mastery of stress, rhythm, intonation patterns; (c) An acceptable degree of fluency; (d) Transactional and interpersonal skills; (e) Skills in taking short and long speaking turns; (f) Skills in management of interaction; (g) Skills in negotiating meaning; (h) Conventional listening skills; (i) Skills in knowing about and negotiating purposes for conversations; and (j) Using appropriate conversational formulae and fillers 1.3.2 Classroom speaking performance

Brown (1994) proposes six categories applied to the kinds of oral production that students are expected to carry out in the classroom:

a) Imitative takes a very limited portion of classroom speaking time when learners are

practicing an intonation contour or trying to pinpoint a certain vowel sound, etc

b) Intensive includes any speaking performance that is designed to practice some

phonological or grammatical aspect of language

c) Responsive is short replies to teachers or students initiated questions or comments

These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues

d) Transactional (dialogue) is carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging

specific information

e) Interpersonal (dialogue) is carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social

relationships than for the transmission of facts and information

f) Extensive (monologue): students at intermediate or advanced levels are called on to

give extended monologue in the form of oral reports, summaries, or perhaps short speeches

These above six categories of Brown are highly valuable in offering a guide in working out the types of classroom speaking performance The teachers should consider these points when teaching speaking skill He also points out the following characteristics of spoken language that can make oral performance difficult:

a) Clustering: speakers have to select from their store of language clustering, that is

groups of words, not word by word, in order to speak fluently

b) Reduced forms: such reduced forms as contractions, reduced vowels, elisions, etc

often create difficulties for both teachers and learners of spoken English

c) Stress, rhythm and intonation: learners of English often find it difficult to

pronounce English words, to stress the right syllables, to follow the stress-timed rhythm and intonation patterns of spoken English

d) Colloquial language: learners sometimes find it difficult to understand and produce

words, idioms and phrases of colloquial language if they are only exposed to standard English or “textbook” language

e) Affective factors: learners learning to speak often encounter the risk of saying out

things that may be wrong or stupid At those times, they tend to be anxious as they

do not want to be judged by other learners or the teacher

f) Interaction: this is the greatest difficulty learners face in their learning to speak

Engaged in process of negotiating meaning with many discourse constraints, learners have to do the complex task of choosing what to say, how to say, or when to speak… 1.3.3 Speaking activities

Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselves through speech are an important component of a language course when CLT is applied Many researchers have discussed classroom activities and a lot of activities are designed based on the theory and characteristics of CLT

Richards and Rodgers (1996) discuss that the range of exercise types and activities with a communicative approach is unlimited, provided that such exercises and activities enable learners to attain the communicative objectives of the curriculum, engage learners in communication and require the use of such communicative processes as information sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction In their view, classroom activities should

be designed to focus on completing tasks that are mediated through language of involve negotiation of information and information sharing

Teachers, therefore, should know how to adopt appropriate speaking activities which can help learners develop their speaking skills However, it is not easy for teachers to design and administer such activities Ur (1996) lists out four main problems teachers often come across They may come across some problems such as: students have nothing to say; they are inhibited to speak in class; they use their mother tongue instead of the target language and their participation is uneven or low

Overcoming these problems to create a successful speaking activity where learners talk a lot, participation is even, motivation is high certainly requires a lot of teachers’ efforts Under the CL conditions, students’ cooperative efforts are expected to be more productive than competitive individual efforts Moreover, working in CL environment with the group-goal structures and self-esteem building strategies, the students are not only well-structured

to participate equally and trained collaborative skills which are helpful in learning but also encouraged and motivated to strive to strengthen themselves and their friends Therefore, it can be said that CL and CLL are very likely to be effective in solving the problems of speaking activities

Summary

The chapter has so far presented the basic theoretical background for the study The main issues including the theory of cooperative learning in general and cooperative language learning in particular, the teaching and learning of speaking skill have all been discussed Basing on this review and having realized the advantages of CL and CLL, an action research on implementing CL structures to enhance students’ participation in speaking activities will be carried out The thorough research will be presented in the next chapter

2 CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH

2.1.1 Subjects of the research

The action research is carried out in a class of 21 second- year college students at the age

of 18 to 20, 4 boys and 17 girls Their English proficiency level is pre-intermediate, but they are at mixed levels of speaking competence About 7 of them (almost from Hanoi and other cities) are rather good at speaking; they are very active, talkative and usually dominant in speaking lessons 8 can be said to be at the average; they are relatively involved in class activities The rest (6) are usually passive and quiet; they seem to keep silent during any speaking activity and even to be scared when asked to speak The class has one speaking lesson (3 periods each) a week and they use “React & Interact” by Byrd D.R.H& Clemente I.C – Longman as their textbook

2.1.2 Procedure of the research

Following is the procedure of the action research, which strictly follows the 7 steps proposed by Nunan (1992):

Step 1: Problem Identification

Since starting teaching at Thanh Do University, the teacher has taught speaking skills many times, and has always been trying to motivate the students to speak out in class However, after two semesters working with the class, a frustrating problem was identified, that is, there was low and unequal participation among the students That urged the teacher

to find a better way to work with the class

Step 2: Preliminary Investigation

In this stage, the teacher spent time talking with the students about the teaching and learning of speaking: the teaching and learning methods, what the students desire to be able to do in speaking lessons, especially in group activities The students were encouraged

to talk about the problems they encounter when working in groups Through continuous classroom interaction, the teacher realized that low and uneven participation was what

most of them wanted to change Some suggested solutions were then discussed, and the teacher had chance to introduce CL

After the problem was discussed, some classroom observation was carried out by the teacher herself and another teacher of speaking skill, who has five-year teaching experience The frequency of students’ participation in these ordinary instructional activities was recorded That helped to get an insight into the problem The observation results would also be used for analysis to see the changes in the students’ participation before and after the action

Step 3: Hypotheses

Through the discussion with the students and the classroom observation, some reasons for the low and unequal participation of the students have been found such as the activities are not very interesting or effective; some students find speaking activities difficult and gradually become de-motivated; meanwhile, the good students have to be responsible for most of group work and do not know how to help their friends to speak with them

The hypothesis for the study was then formed basing on the initial data collected: applying

CL principles in structuring groupwork may increase students’ participation in speaking lessons

The teacher then set up the research questions to be answered later, and started a review of literature to set up a basic theoretical background for the study

for the whole semester The students were also given a card with a code number used for observation

2 CL introduction and training

Firstly, the teacher made the students aware of CL theory such as its definitions, principles and benefits via explicit explanations, some simple tasks and activities structured along CL principles Then, the collaborative skills needed for CL group work were trained The teacher designed some simple activities basing on familiar and interesting topics for the students to work on Before the training, a list of essential collaborative skills was delivered to students (assigning roles, choosing leaders, listening, questioning, etc) During the group discussion, the teacher also joined the groups and gave them clarification or examples needed

3 Implementing CL structured activities

Basing on the course book for the semester, all the speaking activities were designed using

CL structures A common goal was set and the criteria for assessment (e.g marks would be given according to their individual contribution and participation…) were informed so that the students were aware of the responsibility they would take for their individual achievement and for the group’s goal as well Instructions were also given to students before and during each activity to ensure that they thoroughly understood what to do and how

Step 5: Evaluation

To see the effects of CL on students’ participation, observation was done during each activity, informal interviews were carried out after each lesson and journals were to be written at home with some prompts given (see Appendix)

Then, data collected from these sources were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively The frequency and distribution of students’ participation during the activity was calculated and demonstrated in tables A lot of information on the students’ attitudes towards CL, their nature of participation and improvement of oral communications skills was also worked out The data analysis results were then used to discuss the research questions

Step 6: Dissemination

The researcher had chance to share her new experience with some colleagues after the course The action research was hoped to be introduced to other teachers during the M.A thesis defensive presentation

Step 7: Follow-up

In this final step, some lessons were drawn out and suggestions for better application were introduced

2.1.3 Instrumentation and data collection

In order to get the empirical data for the study, three instruments were used, that is, observations sheets, students’ journals and informal interviews with students And as mentioned above, all the data collection was carried out during the first semester of the second year

The first instrument for collecting data is observation sheets Observation is a main tool to collect data for the study as it is a good method to do an action research (Wallace, 1998), and a mainstay of action research, which enables researcher to document and reflect systematically upon classroom interactions and events as they actually occur rather than as the teachers think they occur There are two sets of observation forms uses in the study The first one is adapted from Peacock (1997) It focuses on students’ on-task behavior to measure students’ participation and persistence with the group activities The second observation sheet, on the other hand, consists of a series of interaction categories aiming to record the nature of students’ participation during CL structured activities It is adapted from The Postgraduate Research Handbook by Gina Wisker, 2001 The observation was done before and during the action by the researcher and one of her colleague at the Department

The second instrument is the students’ journals, which were written every week after speaking lessons Journal writing was chosen because previous researches suggested that

as a reflective tool, journals may offer a personal writing place where students may reflect

on their own learning experience, describe their feelings and reactions to the class activities and express their thoughts about the new way of learning For this study,

journals were structured to focus on the issues related to the research questions, and therefore, give the researcher information on students’ reflection on the CL activities done

in class The students were told to be able to freely express their feelings, their opinions and attitudes towards the lessons since their journals would not be marked This has been done to make sure that the research will be provided with reliable qualitative data

The last instrument is the informal interviews with the students It is noted that these interviews were carried out before, during and after the action Throughout the experimental teaching, the researcher conducted informal talks with the students during the class breaks and right after the end of each lesson

After all the data have been collected, they are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed The whole data analysis procedure and all the results will be thoroughly presented in the next section

2.2.1 Data analysis procedure

The data collected from the first observation sheet were used for the quantitative analysis

As mentioned above, these data are useful sources to discover the frequency of students’ participation in every activity The data from the second observation schedules, the students’ journals as well as the interviews were used to do the qualitative analysis, which

is normally of great importance to an action research These sources of data reflect the skills that students have improved and their attitudes towards CL activities

Firstly, to see the changes in the quantity and quality of students’ participation before and after the experimental teaching, observation forms of 6 activities were collected; the frequencies and nature of each student’s participation were counted and marked All the features and numbers were then presented in tables

Then, the students’ reflection on CL structured activities basing on the journals and interviews was read and categorized carefully to focus on the issues related to the research questions such as: their participation, oral communication skills improved and their attitudes towards CL Throughout the whole semester, the researcher collected students’

journals three times for each student for the whole term, and had a lot of responses from the students to the interviews

2.2.2 Data analysis results

a) Quantity of students’ participation

To see the changes in the amount and frequency of students’ participation, observation sheets for the 6 activities were used to get the data for analysis

Overall the students’ average percentage of time to be on task was much higher during the

CL activities than that of the ordinary instructional activities, and all the students were seen

to be involved in the CL group work

The table below shows the results from the first observation sheets:

Table 1: Students on-task behavior

Activities No of times scanned to be on-task

No

of Ss

on task

- task percent -age

On-1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1 Before

No

of Ss

third observed lessons, and only 50.5% in the second one After CL principles were applied for the group activities, things considerably changed All the students contributed

to their group work and they were on-task more than two thirds of the given time Obviously, the students’ average percentage of participation time during CL activities was much higher than that before

Another important feature found from the observations is the difference in the quantity of participation between good and weak students in a group The results are shown in the following tables:

Table 2: Students’ on-task behaviour - Group 1

Activities

No of times scanned to

Table 4: Students’ on-task behavior - Group 3

Activities

No of times scanned to

to be task

is the best, and the student numbered 7 is the weakest)

Analyzing the figures of the first two students in each group (the good ones), it is easy to figure out that the frequency of their participation in the before-activities are almost higher than those after; meanwhile, the frequency of the two last students (the weak ones) in the before-activities are much lower than those after In other words, in the ordinary instructional activities, the two good students cover a large percentage of the total participation (about 55% to 70%), as a result, the weak ones just cover a very small amount However, in the CL activities, the percentage of students’ participation seems to

be more equal They each frequently cover about 30% to 35% of the speaking time of the