Cooperative Learning Boosts EFL Students’ Grammar Achievement
|
| Title | Cooperative Learning Boosts EFL Students’ Grammar Achievement |
| Authors | |
| Abstract | It has been suggested that Cooperative Learning (CL), as a close relative of Community Language Learning (CLL), might be a good alternative to the dominant Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in Asia, where learners are believed to be individualistic, passive, and unable to work cooperatively to construct their own knowledge. Based on ten ninety-minute-long sessions, this study compared CL to GTM in north-east Iran, using an experimental design. This research investigated 64 female freshmen’s achievement on 10 grammatical forms. Thirty-two students (eight four-member groups) participated in the experimental group (CL), and the other thirty two in the control group. The same instructor (one of the researchers) taught in both classes. Using the SPSS software, a covariance test and independent samples t-tests were used to test three hypotheses. A prescribed textbook at the national level was used as the material and a thirty-item test with a reliability of 0.82 was used as the instrument. The findings suggest the superiority of CL to GTM and its being applicable in an Iranian context. Furthermore, in the CL class, the gifted students were found to improve as much as the poor ones. The study offers some implication for teachers, teacher educators, students, and theory developers. |
| Publisher | ACADEMY PUBLISHER |
| Date | 2012-07-01 |
| Source | Theory and Practice in Language Studies Vol 2, No 7 (2012) |
| Rights | Copyright © ACADEMY PUBLISHER - All Rights Reserved.To request permission, please check out URL: http://www.academypublisher.com/copyrightpermission.html. |