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11COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY AS AN EFFECTIVE WAY OF TEACHING ENGLISH
САЛЕНКО ЛЮДМИЛА ЛЕОНИДОВНА
старший преподаватель кафедры «Германо-романская филология» НАО «Северо-Казахстанский университет им. Манаша Козыбаева» г.Петропавловск, Казахстан
Abstract: This article examines the issues of organizing joint learning, creating collaboration in the classroom in the process of mastering language skills. The range of problems on the research topic is determined and ways to solve them are proposed. The organization of English language teaching in small and medium-sized groups opens up wide prospects in the modern structure of education, when one of the most important tasks is the development of the language abilities of each student, the creation of a microenvironment which increases the possibility of practical use of the language at each time interval of the lesson, forms the required language competencies. The study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of cooperative learning in improving students' achievement and attitude towards learning.
Keywords: cooperative learning, strategy, improve, participation, students' achievement, language competencies.
Nowadays, when the system of education in Kazakhstan is in the process of restructuring and updating different learning technologies are used to improve it. Teachers are trying to choose effective methods because every year there is a lot of information that they need to learn, different technologies are introduced so that students can learn new material thoroughly and fast. Sufficient attention is paid to the use of collaborative teaching methods. The involvement of each student in the process of acquiring knowledge, when they become direct and active participants, is one of the most important components of the renewal of education. One of such methods that helps to achieve this goal is cooperative learning. Our research was aimed at demonstrating how effective this approach can be while teaching English, since it is only collaboration that creates necessary environment leading to effective learning. Questionnaires were administered to students of innovative schools . In-depth interviews were conducted with the teachers; besides, senior classes were observed to investigate students' cooperative learning experience, students' attitude towards cooperative learning, the improvements in students' achievement and how cooperative learning influenced the students' performance and class participation. The obtained results demonstrated that there are numerous benefits that can be attributed to cooperative learning strategy such as enhancement in class participation, improvements in students' performance and achievement and more approval of tasks and creating better relationships among learners.
The research was based on the statement that cooperative learning is a technology for teaching small groups, from three to five people. The aim of the work was to study the method of cooperative learning. To achieve this goal, it was necessary to perform a number of tasks, namely to define cooperative learning and identify its elements and to formulate its main advantages and disadvantages.
There are several definitions of cooperative learning. One of them, the most widely used in the field of education, belongs to David and Roger Johnson from the University of Minnesota. According to the Johnson & Johnson model, collaborative learning is learning in which students work in groups to achieve a common goal in conditions that include the following elements:
1. Positive interdependence. In this case, team members are obliged to rely on each other to achieve the goal, and if one of the team members does not do his part of the work, all participants suffer from the consequences.
2. Individual responsibility. All students in each particular group are responsible for doing their share of the work and for mastering all the material being studied.
3. Open communication with each other. Although part of the work in the group can be divided into parts and performed individually, part should be done interactively, and at the same time students have feedback, stimulate reasoning and conclusions and, most importantly, teach and inspire each other.
4. Proper use of cooperation skills. Students are encouraged and, as a result, teamwork helps to develop and practice the skills of building trust, leadership, decision-making, communication and conflict management.
5. Group assessment at all stages. Team members set group goals, periodically evaluate what they are doing well in the team, and determine the changes they will make to work more efficiently in the future.[1, pp.73-77]
The educational process is considered successful if the five listed elements are present in the joint educational activities
Cooperative learning is an approach to group work that maximizes learning and satisfaction from working in a high-performance team. A large and rapidly growing volume of research in this area confirms the effectiveness of co-education in education [2, pp.10-15].
Cooperative learning is a type of group work that develops communication skills and satisfies students in working in a team and with a team.
The scheme of cooperative learning is quite simple and understandable. After receiving assignments and instructions from a teacher, the class is divided into several groups. Each formed group works on the task independently until all its members understand it and successfully complete it. The result of all these cooperative efforts is a certain common benefit, since success in completing tasks is determined by the nature of the activities of each member of the group. The social significance of such a learning model is also obvious, because the role of each student in performing a common task is emphasized, as well as group consciousness, positive interdependence, and communication skills are formed.
If we compare cooperative learning with the traditional method of teaching, it can be clearly seen that students who work together have higher academic achievements. Undoubtedly such students develop their critical thinking skills, their ability to work in a team, the skills of understanding and analyzing all presented educational material, and they also develop the ability to analyze various situations. As a result they have a greater internal motivation to learn and achieve, the ability to consider situations from the point of view of others. In addition, this method also has an advantage for the teacher, as students, studying and performing various tasks together, reduce a teacher's burden on checking the results of their work.
It is stated that there are several reasons why cooperative learning works so well. It has long been proven that students do not learn much if they just watch and listen, so cognitive psychologists, as well as teachers, suggest creating conditions under which students learn and study information on their own, doing something using an active learning method. For this purpose, there is a method of cooperative learning, which is essentially provides higher achievements.
When we drew an analogy of cooperative learning with group work, cooperative learning is aimed at the process and result of students' activities, in which participants take responsibility not only for themselves, but also for their classmates. Using this method, group members contribute to each other's success by doing work together because they help and support each other. What is more, it is commendable in this method that all participants use and develop communication skills and share leadership together.
When comparing group work and cooperative work, there is certain understanding that there is a possibility that weak students working individually are likely to give up when they experience difficulties; but working together, they continue to move forward together with others. On the other hand, strong students who are faced with the task of explaining the material to weaker students often find gaps in their own understanding and fill them in. Students working alone may delay completing assignments or skip them altogether, but when they know that others are counting on
them, they are more interested in completing the work on time. Therefore collaborative learning helps students learn new concepts and skills together, rather than on their own.[3, pp.22-30]
The cooperative learning has its advantages and disadvantages. So what are the advantages of the cooperative learning method?
The advantages of joint learning over the traditional group method of learning are as follows:
1. It creates higher-level thinking skills due to the need for recognition of skills and the presence of empathy.
Students can't know how to help each other until they get to know each other better. This forces them to start using higher-level thinking skills so that they can understand what gaps exist in their team and how these gaps can be addressed. These skills are an integral part of what the professional community requires when it comes to teamwork.
2. It creates new forms of individual responsibility.
Instead of working on an individual assessment, which may not be taken care of, students in groups are forced to consider themselves responsible to the group so that the best possible result can be obtained and equal participation is necessary to achieve that. There will always be students who rebel against such a system and refuse to participate, but co-education allows you to identify such students and work with them.
3. It increases the level of personal participation in lessons.
In a classroom where there may be 20 students, it may take 45 minutes for everyone to participate in an individual lesson. However, by creating a collaborative learning environment, each group can be called after a certain period of conversation with each other so that everyone participates without the same time constraints. Group responses are given based on all individual feedback, so that each student can express their opinion in the lesson.
4. It increases self-esteem at different levels.
There are students who always feel that they are deprived in a certain way, and at the same time co-education gives them an obvious opportunity to prove themselves. It becomes possible to take into account strong and weak points of each student, and this creates an explicit form of equality in the group of students, which is not always ensured with individualized learning. The final result is that students tend to feel more accepted, develop their leadership qualities, and even develop their own problem-solving skills.
However, despite the undoubted advantages, this method is not ideal and has its drawbacks, in particular:
1. It offers a rating system that could be considered unfair.
In the vast majority of co-educational programs, the assessment is given to the whole group and not to each participant separately. This means that a student's grades may directly depend on the contribution of the person with the weakest knowledge of the material on the subject. For those who are well versed in the subject and have done everything possible to help their group, an insufficiently high score seems unfair and may cause dissatisfaction that will stop further development.
2. It creates some new systems of socialization structure, which are not always beneficial.
When organizing co-education, students quickly find out which of them is well versed in
certain subjects, and who is not competent enough. The best students will try to get into groups with each other to avoid problems with grades, which creates a certain polarization among students. Over time, this may even encourage students to stop trying to work as much as possible.
3. This puts the responsibility of the teacher on his students.
In principle, teaching their peers on subject topics is not the task of students. This is primarily the responsibility of the teacher. However, in this system of cooperative learning, the teacher distributes tasks, and students are forced to become teachers to a certain extent if they want to make sure that they can get a passing grade.
4.It creates a dependency system.
When there are others on whom you can fully rely in the work, the student begins to develop a habit in the learning process. They become dependent on others who systematically help them solve specific tasks. Unfortunately, this is not always the case in the professional world. Students who depend on help become workers who depend on it in the future, and ultimately put today's students at a disadvantage as workers of tomorrow and deprive them of proper prospects.
We analyzed the reasons to use cooperative learning in the process of teaching the English language and they gave rise to further research.
Cooperative learning and English language learners go together because cooperative learning definitely helps English language acquisition among students . They become more confident in using their knowledge in English while working in small groups. Students can pick up new learning methods by observing how their peers solve problems that involve learning English.[4, pp.2-3] We tend to behave as we have been taught. A highly individualistic and competitive environment may lead to an inability to get along and cooperation changes this situation It is a fact that learners bring with them their own attitudes and prejudices. Population diversity is becoming more the norm than the exception in many places. When there is a mix of learners in the same class there is the potential to diminish negative attitudes and to develop positive ones when interaction is properly structured. Cooperative learning structures can be used to develop constructive and supportive peer relationships which is important for creating language developing environment. Using the language in real life in the future mostly takes place when people work cooperatively in teams. So learners need academic skills, personal skills and cooperative or teamwork skills. Schools and colleges generally do a good job of the academic skills but often neglect the personal and teamwork skills.Cooperative learning changes this for the better.[5, pp.5-11] The advantages and disadvantages of co-education show that it can be a complex education system if it is not managed properly. It can also be an important key to unlocking the potential of current students.
Undoubtedly, the role of a teacher is very important in co-education. To create an effective collaborative learning group, teachers need to know their students very well. Dividing students into groups can be a difficult process and requires caution, so teachers should take into account their students' different learning skills, cultural background, personality traits, and even gender when organizing joint groups. A lot of time is devoted to the preparation of the lesson when using collaborative learning. The teacher takes a back seat and assumes the role of a "learning facilitator" during the lesson, helping students understand what information will be needed and useful for completing the task.
During our research a good example of the role of a teacher could be seen on the Puzzle strategy [6, pp.177-179] The teacher assigned students to groups and each group was given to study the same problem. At the beginning of the lesson, students worked in groups to learn about the whole problem; later, the groups were dissolved and reformed into expert groups, while it was important that each group had to focus on a selected aspect of the general problem. Further, the expert groups were disbanded, and the initial general groups were reformed to find out what expert students could add to their general understanding of the problem which was being solved. During this strategy, the teacher observed and also helped students if there were any questions or difficulties.
Another version of the cooperative learning strategy used in the study was "Project-based learning" [7, pp.21-28]. A different number of students participated in this strategy, it depended on the complexity of the project being implemented, up to the entire class. The teacher or students chose a question or an issue which was interesting to other learners; the teacher helped students to identify their interests and make a plan for the study of the problem. Students worked together for a long time to investigate the original issue.
During the study, ten Kagan strategies of cooperative learning were used, four of which were modified. These were Round Robin, Numbered Heads Together, Jigsaw - Traveling Heads Together, Fan-n-pick, Sage-N-Scribe, Four corners -Showdown, Talking chips, Stir the Class -Rally Coach, Quiz-Quiz-Trade, and Mix - Freeze - Pair - Five whys. All of the strategies provided
positive results, but Quiz-Quiz-Trade, Talking chips, Four corners -Showdown, and Mix - Freeze -Pair - Five Whys were most successful. Students were actively involved in the educational process when such strategies were used. As a result of observing the learning process, students demonstrated strong work outputs. While implementing cooperative learning strategies, students felt at ease, calm, self-assured, eager, and ready to contribute and communicate. It was possible to create a student - centred class using these technologies. The learners were able to work together and do all tasks to achieve the desired result when employing the strategy. It was essential that accomplishing a common goal required the efforts of all participants of the class. To test the effectiveness of each method, students' activities were evaluated according to the following criteria: the use of new words, their correct pronunciation, as well as the correct use of vocabulary and grammar, as well as participation in the group work and the behaviour of the student in the group, namely the ability to cooperate within it. After using cooperative learning at the English lessons, we conducted a post-experimental diagnosis to analyse the changes in the level of students' language competences. It was carried out in three stages. In the first stage, students had to watch a video and answer the question. In the second stage, students have randomly selected cards where they have to answer a question within two minutes. The third stage required to discuss several questions in groups. After that, the results of post diagnostics were analyzed. The results showed that in the experimental groups, the level of conversational skills increased by 3.25 points. While in the control groups, there were no significant changes. The results obtained made it clear that the strategies that were applied in the lessons were able to develop the speaking skills of the students in the experimental groups. This helped to develop not only their speaking skills but also to form a group consciousness, a positive interdependence among students because the use of such techniques enables each student to take an active part in the process of learning. Since the particular focus was made on cooperative learning strategies we came to the conclusion that they promoted the establishment of a cooperative, caring atmosphere in which everyone understands how to listen, hear, and assist their partner. Overall, everyone was determined to succeed in completing the task. Therefore, everyone tried to help each other because each student has his own strengths and weaknesses, and with the help of these strategies, everyone learns to overcome difficulties together.Besides,recommendations were proposed for the organization of work aimed at developing conversational skills in particular through cooperative learning at an English lesson. Thus, as a result of using cooperative learning at the English language lessons, senior students were able to improve their speaking. The use of structures from the cooperative learning approach had a good impact on students' work in the classroom. The benefit of such practice was that many students in the class learnt to speak, see, hear, and correct the mistakes of others at the same time, so increasing and consolidating their knowledge. This indicates that the use of cooperative learning strategies was successful and that they can be used at any stage of the learning process and should be part of the educational process
To sum up, cooperative learning is aimed at promoting and developing the creative abilities of students, increasing the motivation and effectiveness of the student's activities. With the cooperative method of teaching, the teacher acts more as an organizer of educational activities, and the student is a co-organizer and co-manager, and therefore gets opportunities for his academic independence, which allows them to form a positive attitude to their own educational activities and develop the skill of adequate self-assessment. The research done has proved that all of the above is essential for success in teaching English.
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