Tính hiệu quả của việc sử dụng phương pháp học hợp tác trong dạy kỹ năng viết cho sinh viên năm thứ 2 khoa anh, trường đại học tây bắc

1 INTRODUCTION RATIONALE When we learn a foreign language, we learn to communicate with people in other countries by talking to them or writing to them However, there is a fact that not all of us have lots of opportunities to meet foreigners directly so that they can listen to our words, look at our guestures or facial expressions As a result, it is common that writing becomes a social endeavor, a way of communicating with others, informing them, persuading them and debating with them But the fact that people usually have to communicate with each other in writing is not the only reason to include writing as a part of our syllabus The more important reason is that writing can help our students to learn the language better since it gives them chances to make use of grammatical structures, idioms and vocabulary that they have learned Although writing plays a very important role in a foreign language learning, for years of teaching writing skill, I have realized that my students have not been encouraged enough to involve in the writing lessons and their writing skill has also been far from satisfaction As a teacher of writing skill, which is considered to be more boring and challenging than the others, I am always eager for the suitable method of teaching so that I not have to force my learners to write; instead I can stimulate them to give out their thoughts and write with interest Actually, what should be taken into consideration now is the way the knowledge is presented Although many writing methods have been used in classroom alternatively, not all of them are effective enough to promote language acquisition During the last decade, a new approach called Cooperative Learning (CL) seemed to attract a lot of attention and become popular Cooperative Learning is a pedagogical approach that enhances student – student interaction via working in small groups to maximize their learning and reach their shared goal This type of learning approach is believed to decrease competitiveness and individualism but increase opportunities to actively construct or transform the knowledge among students Furthermore, considerable research demonstrated that CL produces higher achievement and more positive relationships among students In short, CL is a powerful educational approach for helping all students attain content standards and develop the interpersonal skills for succeeding With these reasons, I desire to study whether the CL method is really a remedy for the teaching and learning English writing skill at Tay Bac University, where I have been teaching PURPOSES OF THE STUDY This study was firstly aimed at examining the effectiveness of CL on improving the students’ writing skill, changing their attitude towards writing, as well as fostering the students’s engagement and participation in their writing lessons in the context of Tay Bac University Secondly, it was expected to give some suggestions for improving writing skill of students at Tay Bac University Last but not least, it was an attempt to serve as a useful source of reference for teachers of English at the college RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to find out the fact whether CL improves students’ writing proficiency and motivates them to learn, this study was designed with the following questions: How effective is the cooperative learning programme in helping the second year English major students at Tay Bac University improve (1) their writing proficiency? (2) their attitude towards writing? (3) their paticipation in in-class activities? Finally, the study also aimed at finding (4) what the student’s opinions about cooperative learning are? SCOPE OF THE STUDY The study was carried out on only the second-year students of English at Foreign Language Department of Tay Bac University These students were measured their writing proficiency in correlation to the application of an experimental CL It means that the study was not supposed to measure the students’ general language proficiency but merely their writing skill RESEARCH METHOD The first method applied in this study is a quasi-experimental design which involves the three components of experiments according to Selinger and Shohamy (1989): the population (the second-year students at Tay Bac university), the treatment (cooperative learning activities), and the measurement of the treatment (t-test) In addition, pre and post-questionnaires were delivered to students who took part in the CL class as a supporting tool to obtain their change in attitude towards writing What is more, observation was also employed during the teaching time to recognize the participation of students in the control group and the experimental group DESIGN OF THE STUDY The study is composed of three main parts: Introduction, Development which consists of three chapters, and Conclusion The Introduction gives an overview of the study with the rationale for the research, the aims, and the research hypothesis and research questions of the study It also narrows the scope, presents the research methods and outlines the content of the study The development includes three chapters: Chapter one presents the literature review relevant to the study including theoretical background of writing and cooperative learning Chapter two describes in details the research method used in the study with the necessary components before supplying information about the procedures of collecting the data Then, the statistical results and the analysis of the collected data are shown Chapter three discusses the findings from statistical analysis and some pedagogical implications The Conclusion presents a discussion of the major findings from which some pedagogical implications were derived It also provides some limitations and suggestions for further study SUMMARY The first part has given an overview of the study including the rationale, the purposes as well as the research hypothesis and questions of the study Also, all research method employed to get data and the designs of the study have been presented In the next chapter, a theoretical framework for the study will be discussed CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS OF WRITING 1.1.1 Definitions Language educators have long used the concepts of four basic language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Among such four skills, writing is considered as a productive skill in the written mode Writing often seems to be the hardest of the skills, even for native speakers of a language, since “it involves not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of thoughts in a structured way” (Hampton, 1989) In his book, Hampton aslo stated more ideas about writing; that is “writing skills are specific abilities which help writers put their thoughts into words in a meaningful form and to mentally interact with the message.” There are more thoughts expressed about writing by lots of different methodologists For example, according to Kellogg (2000), writing is “a major cognitive challenge, because it is at once a test of memory, language, and thinking ability It demands rapid retrieval of domain-specific knowledge about the topic from long-term memory.” From another view of writing, Murray and Perl (1979) defined writing as “a creative discovery procedure characterized by the dynamic interplay of content and language: the use of language to explore beyond the known content.” Moreover, in Byrne (1988)’s opinion, “writing is much more than the production of graphic symbols, just as speech is more than the production of sounds” because “the symbols have to be arranged, according to certain conventions, to form words, and words have to be arranged to form sentences, then the sentences have been put in order and linked together to form a coherent whole.” The above definitions reflect unlike attitudes towards writing of the authors who are under the control of different theories However, in general, writing is a daunting task for students because it requires the correctness of not only form but also meaning to get the best communicative goals 1.1.2 Role of Writing Skill in Foreign Language Learning When people learn the way to write, not only are they developing a new skill, but they also are “getting involved in an activity in which questions of social role, power, and the appropriate use of language cannot be avoided” (Tribble, 1996) In addition, through mastery of writing, individuals come to be fully effective in interllectual organization, in the management of everyday affairs, in the expression of ideas and arguments By writing they can have control of both information and of people as well Writing is a complex process that allows writers to explore thoughts and ideas, and make them visible and concrete Writing encourages thinking and learning for it motivates communication and makes thought available for reflection 1.1.3 Approaches to Teaching Writing The teaching of writing has had a long history with various approaches employed However, there are several approaches to teaching writing that are presented by Raimes (1983) as follows: 1.1.3.1 The Controlled-to-Free Approach In the 1950s and early 1960, the audio-lingual method dominated second-language learning This method emphasized speech and writing served to achieve mastery of grammatical and syntactic forms Hence teachers developed and used techniques to enable student to achieve this mastery The controlled-to-free approach in is sequential: students are first given sentence exercises, then paragraphs to copy or manipulate grammatically by changing questions to statements, present to past, or plural to singular They might also change words to clauses or combine sentences With these controlled compositions, it is relatively easy for students to write and yet avoid errors, which makes error correction easy Students are allowed to try some free composition after they have reached an intermediate level of proficiency As such, this approach stress on grammar, syntax, and mechanics It emphasizes accuracy rather than fluency or originality, so it has another name of form-focused approach 1.1.3.2 The Free-Writing Approach This approach stresses writing quantity rather than quality Teachers who use this approach assign vast amounts of free writing on given topics with only minimal correction The emphasis in this approach is on content and fluency rather than on accuracy and form Once ideas are down on the page, grammatical accuracy and organization follow Thus, teachers may begin their classes by asking students to write freely on any topic without worrying about grammar and spelling for five or ten minutes The teachers not correct these pieces of free writing They simply read them and may comment on the ideas the writer expressed Alternatively, some students may volunteer to read their own writing aloud to the class Concern for “audience” and “content” are seen as important in this approach 1.1.3.3 The Paragraph-Pattern Approach Instead of accuracy of grammar or fluency of content, the Paragraph-PatternApproach stresses on organization Students copy paragraphs and imitate model passages They put scrambled sentences into paragraph order They identify general and specific statements and choose to invent an appropriate topic sentence or insert or delete sentences This approach is based on the principle that in different cultures people construct and organize communication with each other in different ways 1.1.3.4 The Grammar-Syntax-Organization Approach This approach stresses on simultaneous work on more than one composition feature Teachers who follow this approach maintain that writing can not be seen as composed of separate skills which are learned sequentially Therefore, student should be trained to pay attention to organization while they also work on the necessary grammar and syntax This approach links the purpose of writing to the forms that are needed to convey message All the above approaches, to some extent, emphasize the final product of writing: the essay, the report, the story and what that product should look like According to Brown (1994), those approaches belong to the product approach Therefore, a great deal of attention was placed on “model” compositions that students would emulate and on how well a student’s final product measured up against a list of criteria that included content, organization, vocabulary use, grammatical use, and mechanical considerations such as spelling and punctuation The focus in class will be on copying and imitation, carrying out sentence expansions from cue words and developing sentences and paragraphs from models of various sorts In short, this is a traditional approach, in which learners are encouraged to mimic a model text, which is usually presented and analyzed at an early stage There is nothing wrong with attention to any of the mentioned criteria They are still the concern of writing teachers But learners also should be seen as creators of language to create meaningful content and message, which means their own individual intrinsic motives are put at the center of learning 1.1.3.5 The Process Approach Recently, the teaching of writing has moved away from a concentration on written product to an emphasis on the process of writing In this approach, students are trained to generate ideas for writing, think of the purpose and audience, and write multiple drafts in order to present written products that communicate their own ideas Teachers who use this approach give students time to tray ideas and feedback on the content of what they write in their drafts As such, writing becomes a process of discovery for the students as they discover new ideas and new language forms to express them Furthermore, learning to write is seen as a developmental process that helps students to write as professional authors do, choosing their own topics and genres, and writing from their own experiences or observations A writing process approach requires that teachers give students greater responsibility for, and ownership of, their own learning Students make decisions about genre and choice of topics, and collaborate as they write During the writing process, students engage in pre-writing, planning, drafting, and post-writing activities However, as the writing process is recursive in nature, they not necessarily engage in these activities in that order 1.1.3.6 The Communicative Approach This approach stresses the purpose of writing and the audience for it Student writers are encouraged to behave like writers in real life and ask themselves the crucial questions about purpose and audience: Why am I writing this? / Who will read it? Helping students comprehend that a successful piece of writing must attain its communicative purposes is the advantage of the communicative approach Traditionally, the teacher alone has been the audience for student writing But some feel that writers their best when writing is truly a communicative act, for a real reader As such, the readership may be extended to classmates and pen pals However, there are still possible limitations to consider with this approach, so some other authors have developed a new approach called the process gender approach which characterizes not only the learner’s creative thinking and the act of how writers form a text, but also the knowledge of linguistic features as well as specific discourse community where a particular genre performs “The concept not only draws on ideas from genre approaches, such as knowledge of context, the purpose of writing, certain text features, but retains part of process philosophy such as writing skill development and learner response” (Badger & White, 2000) 1.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING 1.2.1 Definitions During the past decade, a new approach called “Cooperative Learning” seemed to attract a lot of attention and became popular So many researchers have been interested in doing research to investigate CL that there has been a great deal of definitions of CL In general, CL is one strategy for group instruction which is under the learner – centered approach In detail, Slavin (1995) considered “CL is an instructional program in which students work in small groups to help one another master academic content.” “CL involves students working together in pairs or groups, and they share information They are a team whose players must work together in order to achieve goals successful” (Brown, 1994) In addition, Kessler (1992) proposes the definition of CL particularly in language learning context: “CL is a within – class grouping of students usually of differing level of foreign/ second language proficiency, who learn to work together on specific tasks or projects in such a way that all students in the group benefit from the interactive experience.” As Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1994) stated “cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups through which students work together to maximize their own and each others learning." In classrooms where collaboration is practiced, students pursue learning in groups of varying size: negotiating, initiating, planning and evaluating together Rather than working as individuals in competition with every other individual in the classroom, students are given the responsibility of creating a learning community where all students participate in significant and meaningful ways Cooperative learning requires that students work together to achieve goals which they could not achieve individually According to Johnson (2005), cooperation is not assigning a job to a group of students where one student does all the work and the others put their names on the paper It is not having students sit side by side at the sime table to talk with each other as they their individual assigment as well It is not having students a task individually with instructions that the ones who finish first are to help the lower students On the contrary, CL is a teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement Students work with assigment until all group members successfully understanding and complete it CL takes many forms and definitions, but most cooperative learning definitions involve small, heterogeneous teams, usually of four or five members, working together towards a group task in which each member is individually accountable for part of an outcome that cannot be completed unless the members work together; in other words, the group members are positively interdependent 1.2.2 Cooperative Learning and Language Acquisition In general, CL has been proven to be effective for all types of students, including academically gifted, mainstream students because it promotes learning and fosters respect and friendships among diverse groups of students Students that are involved in CL achieve many social and academic benefits Cooperative classrooms are classes where students group together to accomplish significant cooperative tasks as Slavin (1987) stated: “They are classrooms where students are likely to attain higher levels of achievement, to increase time on task, to build cross-ethnic friendships, to experience enhanced self-esteem, to build life-long interaction and communication skills, and to master the habits of mind (critical, creative and self-regulated) needed to function as productive members of society.” CL is particularly beneficial for any students learning a second/ foreign language Language teachers frequently hear that CL is an effective strategy for classrooms with English language learning (ELL) students CL strategies have been shown to improve academic performance (Slavin, 1987), lead to great motivation toward learning (Garibaldi, 1979), to increase time on task (Cohen & Benton, 1988), to improve self-esteem (Johnson & Johnson, 1989), and to lead to more positive social behaviors (Lloyd, 1988) For ELL students especially, CL promotes language acquistition by providing comprehensible input in developmentally appropriate ways and in a supportive and motivating environment (Kagan, 1995) Olsen and Kagan (1992) also report some research on CL with respect to some of its benefits for language learning According to them, in traditional classrooms, teachers most of the talking leaving students very little time to speak and to language production, and low-achieving students are given fewer opportunities to participate In contrast, in cooperative classes, up to 80 percent of cooperative class time may be devoted to activities Half of the students may language production while the others are engaged in language comprehension This results in increased active and complex communication for students Furthermore, CL was found to have a positive impact on almost all the variables critical to language acquisition because small group work enriches the language classroom with comprehensible, developmentally appropriate, redundant, and accurate input and it also promotes frequent, communicative, and referential classroom talk in a supportive, motivating, and feedback-rich environment (Kagan, 1994) In conclusion, CL activities promote peer interaction, which helps the development of language and the learning of concepts and content Therefore, it is important to assign ELL students to different teams so that they can benefit from English language role models Apart from learning to express themselves with greater confidence when working in small teams, they can pick up vocabulary and benefit from observing how their peers learn and solve problems 10 1.2.3 Key Elements of Successful Cooperative Learning • Interdependence This element lies at the heart of CL because the essence of cooperative group is the development and maintenance of positive interdependence among team members A sense of interconnectedness can help students transcend the gender, linguistic, and other differences they may sense among themselves These differences often are at the root of prejudice and other interpersonal stress that students experience in school Students need access to activities in which they learn to depend on each other as they ask for and receive help from one another Individualistic and competitive teaching methods certainly have their place in the instructional program, but they should be balanced with cooperative learning (Johnson and Johnson, 1994) When students work in cooperative teams in which "all work for one" and "one works for all," team members receive the emotional and academic support that helps them persevere against the many obstacles they face in school As cooperative norms are established, students are positively linked to others in the class who will help them and depend on them for completing shared tasks By becoming knowers as well as learners in a supportive atmosphere, English learners can establish more equal-status relationships with their peers When the environment becomes more equitable, students are better able to participate based on their actual, rather than their perceived knowledge and abilities Teamwork, fostered by positive interdependence among the members, helps students learn valuable interpersonal skills that will benefit them socially and vocationally • Interaction Academic and language learning requires that students have opportunities to comprehend what they hear and read as well as express themselves in meaningful tasks (McGroarty, 1993) Cooperative learning creates natural, interactive contexts in which students have authentic reasons for listening to one another, asking questions, clarifying issues, and re-stating points of view Therefore, the second element of CL is interaction among members of groups Cooperative groups increase opportunities for students to produce and comprehend language and to obtain modeling and feedback from their peers Much of the value of cooperative learning lies in the way that teamwork encourages students to engage in such high-level thinking skills as analyzing, explaining, synthesizing, and elaborating 26 As illustrated above, all the statistics relating to the post-test from which the students’ writing ability is proved better are higher than that of the pre-test For example, the mean, mode and median of the post-test are almost point higher in comparison with the former one, suggesting a higher level of central tendency of post-test scores On the other hand, those illustrating the dispersion of scores (the range and S.D) appeared lower with the post-test scores The results shows that there is a significant difference in pre-test and post-test of the experimental groups, which supports the effectiveness of cooperative learning when dealing with writing skill In summary, although both control and experimental groups made certain progress in their writing proficiency at the end of the term, it is obviously that students in the later group in which cooperative learning was applied improved much more considerably than those in the other group Once more, cooperative learning was found to be effective in promoting students’ capability in general and their writing skill in particular 2.4.2 Data Analysis of Questionnaires 2.4.2.1 Comparison of students’ attitudes to writing before and after the experiment Percentage of agreement and disagreement were calculated for all questionnaire items in this part Data were reduced to three categories for clearer presentation: i.e., strongly agree/agree and disagree/strongly disagree were combined The results of the preand -post questionnaires filled out by students in the experimental group were compared and the increase (+) or decrease (-) in the percentage of students who strongly agreed or agreed to the statements in the post-questionnaire in comparison with those in the prequestionnaire is shown in the following tables Table Students’ interest in writing skill Pre-questionnaire Post-questionnaire Comparison Level of agreement Statements 3 1 I like writing in 10% 37.5% 52.5% English 50% 32.5% 17.5% +40% -5% -35% I like the writing 10% 17.5% 72.5% lessons in school 65% 22.5% 12.5% +55% +5% -60% I like writing 5% 25% 70% activities in school 67.5% 20% 12.5% + 62.5% -5% -57.5% I think writing + 55% -7.5% -47.5% activities in school are 7.5% 27.5% 65% 62.5% 20% 17.5% various I think writing 0% 15% 85% +57.5% +12.5% -70% activities in shool are 57.5% 27.5% 15% interesting (3 = strongly agree/agree; = uncertain; = disagree/strongly disagree) 27 As can be seen from the table, there was a great change regarding the students’interest in writing in English before and after the experiment At first, according to their psychological characteristics as well as their experience in learning English, more than half of the students did not prefer to learn writing skill (52.5%) This fact might be the result of different factors demonstrated later on Writing in English was the favourite of only 10% students who found themselves beneficial from it However, the students’ low motivation in learning writing reasonably improved due to the new learning and teaching method 40% was the percentage of those who made a change to love the skill, which led to a decrease of 35% the haters As regards their oppinions about the writing lessons in school, most students claimed that they were not in positive point (72.5%) Almost two third of them were not in favour of the writing activities in school as these activities were not of their interest, not to mention the monotony Fortunately, such poor situation did not exist with the application of the experimental programme Although it could not satisfy all the leaners, a mass of them assumed the diversity and enjoyment of the implemental activities A comparison of the results in the pre- and –post questionnaires provided us with a visible indication when there was an increase of 67.5%, 62.5%, 57.5% in the propotion of students who liked the activities, found them various and interesting respectively Correspondingly, fewer students felt uninspired in writing lessons, which created a great encouragement for the teacher- researcher All in all, cooperative learning in writing had made an undoubtedly good impact on the learners’ views of writing A majority of the students became neutral or positive towards writing skill and writing lessons instead of maintaining their opinions in the opposite side Was another element, students’ opinions about difficulty in writing, in the same situation? Table Students’ opinions of writing in English Pre-questionnaire Post-questionnaire Comparison Level of agreement Statements 3 I think it is very 87.5% 10% 2.5% difficult to write 75% 22.5% 2.5% -12.5% +12.5% 0% I don’t have 50% 40% 10% confidence in writing 25% 62.5% 12.5% -25% +22.5% +2.5% It takes me lots of 95% 5% 0% time to write 55% 45% 0% -40% +40% 0% (3 = strongly agree/agree; = uncertain; = disagree/strongly disagree) 28 There were still a lot of students (55%) taking time to write in English after the programme, however, it was obviously that this rate reduced so much in comparison with the former one (95%) It means 40% students found them to better their writing speed as a result of not wasting time thinking alone Besides, it was not so surprised to find out that most students saw writing as a very difficult skill no matter what before or after the experiment with the percentage of 87.5% and 75% respectively Perhaps the fact that their knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary was quite not good caused them permanent challenges in writing Nevertheless, what drew my attention more was a large fall of the students who did not feel confident in writing Initially, exactly half of the students were afraid of writing in English, but the proportion dropped to only one fourth after using the cooperative learning programme To some extend, the experiment helped many students speed up their writing as well as overcome their unwillingness in writing Table Students’ preferences for form of activities Pre-questionnaire Level of agreement Statements I like to be given lots 55% of guidance/ control from the teacher 10 I like to work with 30% classmates 35% 10% Post-questionnaire Comparison 27.5% 30% 42.5% -27.5% 50% -5% +32.5% 20% 65% 30% 5% -35% +20% +15% (3 = strongly agree/agree; = uncertain; = disagree/strongly disagree) The table above shows the students’ preferences for form of activities in writing lessons In the pre-questionnaire, more students preferred getting much guidance from the teacher to working with their classmates This could be made clear firstly because the students had not used to discuss with their partners during writing lessons, they did not realize the benefits of such way of learning In addition, most students appeared so passive in learning that they were not willing to work with the others The results in the postquestionnaire indicated a considerable change In stead of wishing to get more control from the teacher, 65% students wanted to be in groups with their partners In other words, cooperative learning was useful and interesting enough to make a difference of the students’ attitude to the form of learning approach As far as I am concerned, the experiment brought great satisfaction to both the students and the teacher To the students, not only did it motivate them to learn writing skill, but it also helped them have confidence in writing To the teacher, the programme gave her the feedback being expected 29 2.4.2.2 Comparison of students’ participation before and after the programme Table Students’ participation in writing lessons Pre-questionnaire Post-questionnaire Frequency Statements 4 1 I nothing in 0% 0% 30% 70% 0% 0% 5% 95% writing lesson Comparison 0% 0% -25% +25% I only listen to the others and 37.5 55% 7.5% 0% % note down 5% 22.5 72.5 0% % % -32.5% -32.5% 65% % I ask my classmates for their opinions 0% 12.5 5% 22.5 % % 27.5 57.5 10% 5% % % +27.5% +45% -55 % -17.5 % I share my opinions with 0% 10% 70% 20% 25% 55% 20% 0% my classmates +25% +45% -50% -20% I answer the teacher’s questions 0% 15% 42.5 42.5 % % 10% 30% 37.5 22.5 % % +10% +15% -5% -25% I ask the teacher for what I am not sure 0% 5% 40% 55% 5% 35% 35% 25% +5% +30% -5% -30% (4 = always; = often; = sometimes; = never) The students’ participation in writing lessons was also an aspect on which some conclusions about the effectiveness of cooperative learning were drawn Having a look at the table 9, what impressed me most was the deviation in the results of staments (I ask my classmates for their opinions) and (I share my opinions with my classmates) before and after the experiment As a matter of fact, almost students never asked or shared opinions with their classmates in the previous writing lessons, one fourth of them made the action become their habit during the programme Especially, those who often cooperated with the others took up almost 55% in the later questionnaire, increasing 45% in comparison with the results in the former one Naturally, the number of passive and quiet students dramatically decreased from 92.5% to 27.5% in statement 30 30% students admited they previously sometimes did not anything in the writing lessons, however, most of them then had no free time with the experimental learning activities The result of statement shows that 95% of the whole students usually involved in the given tasks during the experiment Additionally, it can be seen in the postquestionnaire that more students felt seft-confident enough to such jobs as responding to the teacher’s questions or asking for what was not fully understood Maybe the traditional teacher-centered approach supplied students with more chances to interact with the teacher; most of them were too ashamed to so Certainly, more careful preparation made in groups gave the students eagerness to express themselves In summary, many students benefited from the programme in the way that they had more opportunities to take part in learning activities and show their ability 2.4.2.3 Students’ opinions of Cooperative Learning Table 10 Students’ opinions of Cooperative Learning Level of agreement Staments CL helps me to learn new things easily and quickly 65% 30% CL makes me more confident in speaking and writing in E 77.5% 20% CL stimulates my creativeness and activeness 67.5% 25% CL helps everyone reach the goal equally 55% 35% CL helps me to enrich English vocabulary and grammar 65% 25% CL helps to solve my problems of expressing ideas 70% 15% CL provides me with more ideas in writing 80% 20% CL helps to develop critical thinking 55% 30% CL improves my writing skills 70% 17.5% 10 I feel intellectually challenged through CL 15% 20% (3 = strongly agree/agree; = uncertain; = disagree/strongly disagree) 5% 2.5% 7.5% 10% 10% 15% 0% 15% 12.5% 65% Table 10 describes attitudes of the second-year students towards cooperative learning Among ten items, the first four ones were to examine the impact of CL on the students’ manner in learning, and the rest on their language and writing abilities According to the result shown in the table, it was not surprising to find out that two third of the students indicated that CL had good influence on their manner in learning English First, because it seemed easier to learn from friends, 65% students confirmed they could learn new things faster than they used to Especially, the majority of the students (77.5%) asserted that they were no longer too afraid to express their ideas in English orally or writtenly As a result, they were able to make full use of their creativeness and activeness 31 As for the students’ evaluation of CL in relation with their language and writing abilities, a proportion of about 65% students agreed that CL helped them to enrich their vocabulary and grammar, reinforce their previouly- learned grammartical structures They, therefore, did not have to deal with difficulties in expressing their ideas Apart from that, 80% students got more ideas for their writing thanks to working with the others, which was completely right to the idiom “two heads are better than one” Obviously, CL made an important contribution to the students’ writing skills when 70% found their writing ability improved, and 55% developed their critical thinking On the other hand, those who disagreed with all mentioned statements accounted for a very small percentage, ranging from 0% to at most 15% The last statement, which emphasized the students’ challenge in participating CL, was an exception when it was agreed with the least It means that most students could involve themselves into learning without a lot of difficulties In short, it can be interpreted from the analysis that almost students had a fairly high agreement with this learning approach 2.4.3 Data Analysis of Observation During the experiment, participation of the students in both control and experimental groups was always observed by the teacher- reseacher Moreover, observations were also carried out during the pre- and -post tests in two groups to see how writing speed of the students improved The first obervation took place with the lesson of writing a process paragraph In the control group, the teacher delivered students with material in which there were some fingures showing serveral steps of academic writing process Then, she asked the whole class what were the steps there After that, she asked each student to make a list of things that they should in each step, and she elicited the answers with the whole class to write on the board Next, she got the individual to make an outline based on the given information before she called two students to the board and presented their work She asked for comments for the two outlines on the board from other students Then, she asked students to analyze the model process paragraphs and some exercises concerning the focus language In general, in most activities the students were asked to on their own, then with their partner before they share ideas with the whole class Through the obervation, most students did not involve in the activities, instead, they sat quietly and passively to note down In the experimental group, pairs work and group works were made full use of For example, after giving the material, the teacher required students to work in pairs to discuss and write down names of the steps next to the fingures (think-pair-share) She also told each student to make note on what they should in 32 each step, but then she got them share ideas with the others in a group of four (4S brainstorming, roundrobin brainstorming) Also, before the students made an outline on their own, they were asked to the task first as a team, then with a partner When writing the paragraph, the students were asked to work individually Then they changed their paragraph with a partner and started to check the received writing It was a fact that a majority of students in the experimental group took part in all activities actively, and they were eager to answer the teacher’s questions, too The similar observation was carried out with lessons of writing a cause and effect paragraph, a comparison and contrast paragraph All in all, the experimental group always created a livelier classroom atmosphere than the control one Thanks to the cooperative learning activities applied, much more students under the experimental treatment were encouraged to participate in learning with high motivation Observations during the pre- and -post tests also revealed distinguishable things In the pre-test, the whole subjects in both groups spent all the given time, even some of them could not finish their paragraph when time was up Hardly did they have time to reread their writing, resulting in leaving lots of mistakes and errors uncorrected In the post test, with the same topic and requirement, almost students especially those in the experimental group speeded up their writing More than half of the students in this group completed their writing before the deadline, even many of them had enough time to edit and rewrite their paragraph, comparing with nearly one third of students in the control group who could the same This seemed to indicate that not only students’ motivation but also their writing speed improved so much due to cooperative learning 2.5 SUMMARY The chapter has presented the results of the study based on the data gathered during the programme First, it is a detailed presentation of the setting in which the study was carried out Then, the method and procedures of collecting data used in the study was fully described After all, the major findings include the comparison of writing performance in the pre-test and post-test between the experimental and control group, the improvement made by the group under the experiment, their participation and motivation in writing lessons as well as their opinions about cooperative learning On the whole, students in the experimental group were found to outperform those in the control group in the post writing proficiency tests with higher mean and lower range score The experimental students took part in activities more actively and had positive attitudes towards cooperative learning In the next chapter, the information would be taken into consideration to give the best suggestions for implications 33 CHAPTER DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 3.1 DISCUSSION OF THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS The results of the study show that the programme was successful on the whole, as the students studying in the cooperative context outperformed the students in the control group who studied English writing skill in the traditional method The effects of cooperative learning seem salient in improving the second year students’ writing performance, especially their engagement and motivation towards learning writing The results in this study will be discussed according to the reseach questions: How effective is the cooperative learning programme in helping the second year English major students at Tay Bac University improve (4) their writing proficiency? (5) their attitude towards writing? (6) their paticipation in in-class activities? And then, (4) what are the student’s opinions about cooperative learning? Based upon the findings discussed, the pedagogical implications are drawn and thus guidelines of implimenting CL are proposed 3.1.1 Effects of Cooperative Learning on students’ writing proficiency In spite of the equal in writing performance between the two groups at the beginning, the experimental group performed reasonably better than the control group at the end due to the cooperative learning programme The significant gains of the experimental group on the post-test supported Slavin’s (1987) view: “cooperative classrooms are classes where students are likely to attain higher levels of achievement.” Compared to a whole class format, in cooperative learning, students have more opportunities to share their ideas This interaction with groupmates encourages students to enrich their knowledge of not only background but also the target language, and restructure their ideas For instance, they may need to explain, elaborate, exemplify, defend, and summarize their ideas As such, the experimental group was endowed with more opportunities to actually practice the target language in class through many of the student-centred activities In other words, by working in groups, students enjoy more chances to see how their peers think, create new ideas and use the language, from which 34 they have useful models Furthermore, the frequent practice of thinking, creating and reacting in a group might also be an imprortant factor contributing to the students’ success So far, there have been a great deal of reseaches on cooperative learning, but those studies mainly deal with the effects of this approach on language learning in general, such as Implementing cooperative learning in EFL teaching: process and effects by Tsailing Liang (2002) - a Taiwan student, or speaking skill in particular like Applying cooperative learning to develop speaking skills for the first year students at Vinh university by Hoang Thi Lan (2005), etc As a matter of fact, cooperative learning is believed to be in favour of orally communicative competence rather than written performance Such finding of the considerable improvement of the students’ writing proficiency in this study proves that cooperative learning serves not only speaking skill but also writing skill 3.1.2 Effects of Cooperative Learning on students’ attitude towards writing The results of the questionnaires indicated that the experimental group gained significantly in their motivation towards learning writing skill after the experiment The students no longer felt bored and tired in class but enjoyed themselves in many of the learner-centered activities These results were consistent with a growing body of literature claiming the effectiness of cooperative learning in boosting the learners’ motivation (Garibaldi, 1979; Kagan, 1995; Hoang Lan, 2005; etc) Such outcome could be explained that the cooperative learning context in which the experimental group was exposed to was pleasant and relaxing When students worked in cooperative teams with the rule of “all work for one” and “one works for all”, team members received both emotional and academic support that helped them persevere against the obstacles they faced in learning Besides, the student autonomy and familiarity with the target language were enhanced through the group presentation of the vocabulary, the sentence structure and the new ideas Through the method of learning together, the students’ linguistic self-confidence was increased, which then helped them overcome challenges in writing in the target language In sum, cooperative learning activities contributed to students’ positive change in their attitude toward writing 3.1.3 Effects of Cooperative Learning on students’ activeness In cooperative learning context, the students were active participants instead of passive recipients and listeners to the teacher’s lecture and explanation Due to the socially oriented lessons taught and learned through small group interaction, the students in the experimental group were able to demonstrate better than the control group The amount of 35 student-task was further maximized by activities that involved pair work and group work, which engaged all the students Almost the class time in the experimental group was scheduled for activities that included a lot of students work in the target language Cooperative learning offered the students so many chances to show off themselves that they had no time and were not allowed to let their mind wander but concentrated on their task in group To put it in other words, through the learner-centered activities, most, if not all, of the students were forced to speak, listen, read, and write some English that might hardly be possible in a traditional classroom This finding on the improvement of engagement in learning activities corresponded to Glasser’s (1986) theory about the sense of belonging Glasser identified the need to belong, as one of the chief psychological needs of all people Some students found the sense of belonging through involvement in many of the cooperative activities Once they found that they could actually involve and improve in class, their participation would thus be boosted as indicated in the statistical analysis of the questionnaire 3.1.4 Students’ oppinions about Cooperative Learning As predicted, significant achievements in writing proficiency, greater participation in class and oppinions of cooperative learning in writing lessons are closely corelated The students’ positive attitude towards cooperative learning completely corresponded with the improvement in their writing performance and activeness Firstly, most of the students recognized the advantages of cooperative learning in helping them acquire knowledge and discuss ideas The better performance in the students’ writing was by no means an inevitable result of the learning together process Secondly, a majority of the students assumed that this approach stimulated their creativeness and helped them reach the goal equally Such findings were congruent with Johnson’s (1994) claim that within cooperative situations, “individuals seek outcomes beneficial to themselves and all other group members” In accordance with the better performance in writing, students found their English vocabulary and grammar improved so that they could solve their problem of expressing ideas And as discussed above “cooperative learning is believed to promote thinking and creativity in many ways” (Johnson, 1994; Webb, 1989), many of the students agreed that cooperatived help develop critical thinking In summary, almost students liked the learner-centered activities and found them useful with their writing skill It seems that the experiment was workable to most students in the study, which was consistent with theoritical and practical conclusions of cooperative learning in other reseaches 36 3.2 PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS Cooperative learning is a feasible teaching method with characteristics compatible with the current tendency of teaching method renewal and educational reform, especially the aim to foster the students’ potentiality Thus, cooperative learning deserves to be paid more attention from teachers of English in Vietnam There are two major pedagogical implications arising from this study: (1) the importance of organizing a learner-centered cooperative learning context, and (2) the importance of teacher development in cooperative learning 3.2.1 The importance of organizing a learner-centred CL context A number of the major issues addressed in the educational reform are aimed at fostering students’ learning competencies such as communication skills, problem solving abilities, critical thinking abilities, and reasoning with evidence abilities, which is highly achieved by cooperative learning experiences Therefore, cooperative learning is strongly recommended for teachers of English in Vietnam in their English classrooms in general and in their writing lessons in particular 3.2.2 The importance of teacher development in CL To employ cooperative strategies, teachers need access to professional development including the theory and philosophy of cooperative learning, demonstrations of cooperative learning methods, and ongoing coaching and support from other teachers The effects of cooperative learning can be greatly enhanced only when teachers master it and have opportunities to work together and learn from one another Actually, getting acquainted and becoming skillful at cooperative learning take time and effort as we know that cooperative learning is more than just putting students in groups and giving them something to To overcome the initial teacher resistance to change from an old teaching paradigm to an innovative method, specific guidelines for the implementation of cooperative learning in teaching writing are thus proposed for teachers interested in innovating their current teaching methods • Forming teams The question under discussion is that whether the teacher form teams or permit students to choose their own teamates Most experts on cooperative learning suggest that teacher-selected teams are best to use, at least until students become proficient at collaboration The following criteria are suggested for team formation: 37 Form teams of – students for most tasks Many books on cooperative learning recommend groups of – for most tasks because when students work in pairs, the diversity of ideas and approaches that leads to many of the benefits of cooperative learning may not be exploited In teams of five or more, some students are likely to be inactive Make the teams heterogeneous in ability level When forming teams, teacher should take into consideration such features as learning styles, gender, charateristics and especially acedamic achievements In a heterogeneous groups, the weaker students gain from seeing how better students approach problems, and the stronger students gain a deeper understanding of the subject by teaching it to others • Promoting positive interdependence It is important that the instructions on group operation must be introduced and made clear to all students Assign different roles to team members and rotate the roles periodically for each assignment Before giving tasks to teams, each team member must be given a role e.g leader, checker, recorder, reporter, etc and guided how to play the role With different tasks, teacher can rotate the roles so that each student can act various roles and understand the process of working in group • Teachers’ changing roles To ensure that each student is individually accountable to his or her fair share of the team’s work, teachers need to the following to facilitate individual accountability of the students: • Assess how much effort each member is contributing to the group’s work, • Provide feedback to groups and individual students, • Help groups avoid redundant efforts by members, • Ensure that every member is responsible for the final outcome, • Check students’ learning outcome randomly • Suggested in-class activities There are a lot of activities that could be incorporated to maximize students’ encounter with the target language in a writing lessons, some of suggested ones are: • Think-Pair-Share • Team-pair-solo • Rallytable • 4S brainstorming or roundrobin • Peer response 38 • Team-work time in class Though cooperative learning is found to be effective in teaching and learning, no one suggests that the class be organized in cooperative groups all the time In fact, students need to know how to cooperate, compete, and work alone Many cooperative learning activities combine a group component with components in which the teacher lectures or demonstrates and ones in which students work alone (e.g., Slavin, 1995) When students and/or teachers are unfamiliar with cooperative learning, it is best to start slowly by using one cooperative learning technique, such as Numbered Heads Together or Peer Response (Kagan, 1992), several times to let students become accustomed to collaboration It is best to find the right balance of teaching modes according to teacher’s philosophy of education, reading of the research, students' preferences, and what seems to be working best 3.4 SUMMARY The chapter has shown the conclusions in response to the research questions of the study Firstly, cooperative learning helps improve the students’ writing proficiency of the target language, which includes the linguistic, discourse, and writing speed In addition, the frequent interaction among the students increases the amount of student work and student participation in the classroom Also, cooperative learning can boost the students’ motivation in learning as it makes writing lessons more enjoyable, lively, and encouraging As a result, most of the students prefer cooperative learning in their writing lessons to the traditional teacher-centered approach For such reasons, the two pedagogical implementations of cooperative learning in teaching writing are presented to increase the teachers’ enjoyment of teaching and decrease the initial confusion 39 CONCLUSION As far as I am concerned, teaching and learning English writing skills have been far from satisfaction for such a long time Learning writing seems to be a burden to many of the students majoring in English at Tay Bac University The possible reasons to account for it may partly lie in the inadequate method of teaching A potential strategy to address to the problems of low writing proficiency and low interest in learning and teaching would be the implimentation of cooperative learning In theory, cooperative learning methods are believed to accelerate students’ attaiment of not only academic learning, motivation to learn but also the development of the knowledge and abilities necessary for a modern world In reality, cooperative learning has been under investigation of many researchers for the sake of their learners, especially in language acquisition On the whole, the findings in those studies favored cooperative learning as a powerful instructional method On the surface, cooperative learning is a group of learners sitting together and sharing their ideas Therefore, it is a fact that lots of teachers merely group students and give them something to without taking care of students’ groupworking skills And that is not what we call cooperative learning In its deeper meaning, cooperative learning requires students to act different roles and to proceed their groupwork in a professional process Only when designed and implimented by teachers who are loyal to the key elements of cooperative learning, can cooperative learning create supportive environments that enable students to succeed academically, and increase their interest towards learning As such, before asking our students to take part in groups, it is essential to equip them with groupworking skills The results yielded in the study reveal that the application of cooperative learning in writing lessons can bring about desirable benefits to both teachers and students Cooperative learning seems to be a feasible solution to heightening the writing abilities and confidence of students as it increases opportunities for them to produce and comprehend the target language and to obtain modeling and feedback from their peers as well as their teacher Cooperative learning is a powerful teaching method that can boost students’ interest to learn and work hard at writing lessons Those findings demonstrate that cooperative learning is not biased towards oral communication; it can be some good to any of four language skills In such crowded and heterogeneous classes as ones at Tay Bac University, cooperative learning is believed the best option for both students and teacher 40 because it emphasizes active interaction between students of diverse abilities and background, then cuts down teachers’ burden of controlling the class Depite some positive findings, the study exposes some limitations that might be noted before the results could be generalized The first limitation originates in the sample size of the study which was restricted to only two groups of 80 Thus, only 40 students who were not randomly chosen received the experimental programme Future studies on more participants are recommended in order to get more evidence on the effects of cooperative learning What is more, because the results were found on the samples of second year English major at Tay Bac University, equivalent to the beginning of intermediate, they can not be generalized to all levels and subjects Future reseach might be conducted with students at other levels of English proficiency or school to generate more general ideas Another suggestion for futher study is about the application of this approach in other language skills of speaking, listening, and reading to look for a better way of teaching and learning English as a foreign language ... I think it is very 87.5% 10% 2. 5% difficult to write 75% 22 .5% 2. 5% - 12. 5% + 12. 5% 0% I don’t have 50% 40% 10% confidence in writing 25 % 62. 5% 12. 5% -25 % +22 .5% +2. 5% It takes me lots of 95% 5%... 37.5% 52. 5% English 50% 32. 5% 17.5% +40% -5% -35% I like the writing 10% 17.5% 72. 5% lessons in school 65% 22 .5% 12. 5% +55% +5% -60% I like writing 5% 25 % 70% activities in school 67.5% 20 % 12. 5%... Comparison 0% 0% -25 % +25 % I only listen to the others and 37.5 55% 7.5% 0% % note down 5% 22 .5 72. 5 0% % % - 32. 5% - 32. 5% 65% % I ask my classmates for their opinions 0% 12. 5 5% 22 .5 % % 27 .5 57.5 10%