● Reluctant attitudes
In CL, students may hesitate to work with certain other students or may not want to work in a team situation. They are not willing to work with teammates because some students may just prefer to work alone, and they don‟t want to rely on others. They don‟t want to share their ideas what they know because they are afraid that the others will be better than them. They tend to compete with one another. Due to the influence of traditional Confucian philosophy, the students believe that knowledge comes from the teacher, not from their peers. As a result, they are reluctant to accept group members as their collaborator, let alone tutors. This implies that learning culture affects the success of CL.
● Group conflicts
The main challenge faced in CL is a conflict occurring within the group because CL groups are often selected by the teacher to promote heterogeneity. Thus, students may initially feel uncomfortable with their group-mates who might not have been known before or whom perhaps they knew little about. As a result, group-mates may not get a long with each other. Conflict can be seen as an opportunity once student groups reach interdependence. It is an absolute necessity if groups are going to avoid “group-think”
restrictions. Group cohesiveness occurs only to the extent that people‟s needs are satisfied.
To prevent or solve conflicts within the groups, students should keep an open mind and listen to others‟ perspectives. Especially, they define responsibilities of individuals in groups. Students need to understand that they are linked together in a way that ensures that
they all achieve their goals. Each student may have a different role, but that role must be crucial to the group process. This helps them equally participate. Furthermore, each member in group should avoid sharp criticism and negative reactions to each other‟s ideas and insights.
● More frequent use of the mother tongue
Students prefer to use the mother tongue while working in groups. This can easily occur when teacher have lost her/his control of the class. Students feel easier, more comfortable, and even funnier when they make their own discoveries and solve their own problems in their mother tongue. To promote proper L2 use, students need sufficient language support, such as dictionaries (and other reference sources) and pre-task activities as a guidelines. However, pre-tasks and instructions in the target language may not sufficient in some language classes. Furthermore, teachers are not always willing to help students to work in their target language when necessary. Thus, more frequent use of mother tongue is a big obstacle in utilizing CL.
In order to get over these above challenges and help to make CL techniques more successful in language teaching, the following section will offer some pedagogical implications and suggestions regarding to help improve the quality of CL mode.
3.2 Teaching implications
From the analysis and discussion above, the findings show that most of the students have quite positive attitudes towards CL. They are aware of gaining numerous benefits of CL. However, there exist some obstacles in the process of CL. The main obstacles they faced to in participating CL activities are the disagreement within their own group, lack of time, negative attitudes of some students, more frequent use of the mother tongue. These obstacles are resulted from the poor background knowledge, large topics, unsuitable group size, boring activities, frequent habit of using mother tongue, bad management of group leaders and teachers, no „reward and punishment‟ policy for better or weaker/ silent students,…. In short, these findings show that although the students were positive to CL, they may inform teachers of the potential opportunities and constrains in applying CL
principles in the context of Nghe An Teachers‟ College. The context variables such as students‟ social background and learning culture (habit, learning style…) affects the success of CL. Therefore, the following section will offer some pedagogical implications and suggestions regarding the teachers to help improve the quality of CL mode.
● Raising deeper understanding of the concept of CL
In fact, CL is different from pair work and group work. When organizing CL activities, teachers should have deeper understanding of the concept of CL. Group work does not mean CL and not all the learning groups are cooperative ones. CL is not simply assigning students to groups in which one student does all the work or team members perform their tasks individually (Kagan, 1994). Similarity, Jalilifar (2010) warns that simply putting students in groups does not guarantee positive results. It becomes CL when it includes eight CL principles: heterogeneous grouping, collaborative skills, group autonomy, simultaneous interaction, equal participation, individual accountability, positive interdependence, and cooperation as a value ( see Thủy, 2006: 13).
● Using CL activities more frequently
Additionally, students at Nghe An Teacher‟s College in particular and students in general still were deeply affected by the traditional teaching methods and the learning environment at second or high schools where new learning styles were not encouraged and student-centered method was not focused. It would be suggested that the teachers, especially the teachers at Nghe An Teacher‟s College should be encouraged to use CL activities more frequently. Because it is an effective means of increasing students‟
participation in language classrooms and the active participation of the students in their own learning contributes to a more successful lesson as Hasan (1991, 70) states, “No matter what the subject is, learning is better if the learner is an active participant”. On the other hand, one of the benefits of CL is that it helps student enhance communicative skills.
This is different from traditional method. Students will be able to use English perfect in their everyday life or their future work. If the teachers can do so, as a result, students will feel preferable to CL approach.
● Organizing groups carefully
In order to make a learning situation to be more cooperative and more effective, the teachers should pay much attention to the way of organizing group effectively. Firstly, the teachers should be conscious of group size. „How many members are in each group?‟ is relevant. In general, the suitable number of the group would be below 6 because large groups will reduce each member‟s opportunity to participate actively. Especially, the students tend to subdivide their groups into smaller groups of two, even when their teachers ask them to work in group. Therefore, the teachers should assign 4 or 5 members in each group. Secondly, all groups should be equal in aspect of group size as well as group quality. From a survey, the students indicated that their teachers often allowed students to choose their own groups or grouped students at random. This would create unbalance or disagreement among groups. There would exist some strong groups and weak groups. As a result, the weak students could not achieve more benefits at the same time from CL. On the other hand, students may feel uncomfortable with their group-mates if the teachers grouped at random. Hence, the teachers should assign students in heterogeneous groups that benefit both better and weaker students a lot. Of course, the teachers have to pay attention to students‟ personalities, interests or preferences because this helps reduce conflicts within a group. Finally, the teachers should care of group reward. Giving some more points to the best or better groups as an award is the most popular among the teachers. This is a practical way of encouraging all groups to work better. And in order to make the students to work in groups more actively, the teachers should have clear
“punishment and reward” policy for the whole group or each group member. For example, the teachers should mark the finished work of the whole group firstly and then the teachers should reward some more marks for more dominant or more active students. In addition, the teachers need to provide mechanisms for groups to deal with uncooperative members.
For example, they could give low marks to these students. This will also create the fairness as well as equal participation in the whole group.
● Using CL activities more flexibly
Most teachers often organize groups of 5 or 6 students and ask them discuss the
students feel too boring. It is advisable that the teachers use CL activities more frequently and flexibly in language classroom such as Jigsaw, Think/Pair/Share, Group Investigation, or Roundtable. If these activities are conducted more often, students become better at exchanging ideas, thinking and solving problems, capturing ideas in brainstorming and developing their common background. The teachers should let students work in groups to finish specific tasks such as portfolio, group presentations, project work…outside their classroom in order to encourage them to work cooperatively. Interestingly, students can be equipped with helpful knowledge, experiences, skills for their learning and future jobs through these tasks. More important, the teachers should conduct the different and various types of CL activities.
● Joining groups as an additional group member
How to control the group work effectively is the question all teachers should bear in mind. As usual, many teachers often go around the class to observe the students‟ group- work in order to remind them to concentrate on their work, not on their private talk. They often stop at each group and ask the students whether or not they need her help or check how much each group work gets in progress. In this paper, It would be suggested that the teachers should join the group for a while and offer assistance or suggestions as an additional group member. This will help overcome above challenges of CL because while participating in CL activities the students have many difficulties such as limited background knowledge, lack of vocabulary, or frequent use of the mother tongue. Thus, the teachers should sit alongside individuals experiencing difficulties and support them what they need. The teachers should work as both tutor and group member in the classroom.
● Helping students how to work in groups effectively and how to show or present their group work result
In order to help the students achieve better result, the teachers should help students learn how to work in group work effectively by distributing work among the group (i.e.
they should appoint who is the secretary to write down the ideas from the group members and who is the speaker of the group to make presentation? The teachers should help them
know how to present or show their group work result in the whole class. For example, the teachers should teach them how to use body language such as gestures, eye-contact,…), how to make logical outline for their work, how to attract the other group by using some software such as powerpoint, flashcard, photostory, photoshop,………
In short, CL should be used regularly and flexibly, but the teachers should be aware of not overusing them. A good teacher should combine many learning methods, many learning activities and vary them in the class according to the specific tasks, otherwise, the students might feel bored with the CL.
3.3 Suggesions
3.3.1 Suggesion of some basic CL activities in language classroom
A number of books have appeared in the last few years, which provide many cooperative activities either designed for the language classroom or easily adapted for language learning. These include Kagan (1994), Slavin (1990), and Jacobs and Hall (1994)… Listed here is a selection of cooperative activities that have used most effectively in language classrooms.
3.3.1.1 Jigsaw
Using Jigsaw, students are assigned to 5 or 6 member heterogeneous study teams. After the materials have presented to students, each student is responsible for a portion of the material. Having read the information, the students discuss it with their counterparts from other group. Then, the students return to their teams and teach their teammates what they have learned.
3.3.1.2 Think/Pair/Share
Perhaps the most basic activity or structure is Think/Pair/Share, developed by Kagan (1994). This activity involves a three step cooperative structure:
Step 1: Thinking: The teacher poses a question or an issue association with the lesson and
Step 2: Pairing: The teacher asks students to work in pairs and discuss what they have been thinking about.
Step 3: Sharing: In the third step, the teacher asks the pairs to share with the whole class what they have been talking about.
3.3.1.3 Numbered Heads Together (Kagan)
According to Kagan (1994), this approach was developed in 1993 to involve more students in the review of materials in a lesson and to check their understanding of a lesson‟s content. Numbered Heads Together is particular appropriate for reviewing grammatical structures, vocabularies, or factual items from a reading or audio-visual text.
In this activity, the teachers use the following four step structures:
Step1: Numbering: The teacher establishes a team of four members. Each member is given numbers of 1, 2, 3, 4.
Step 2: Questioning: The teacher asks students a question. Questions can be specific and in question form.
Step 3: Heads Together: Students put their heads together to figure out and make sure everyone knows the answer.
Step 4: Answering: The teacher calls out a number (two) and each two from each group raise their hands and provide answers to the whole class.
3.3.1.4 Group Investigation
Sharan (1984) and his colleagures described the following six steps of Group investigation approach.
Step 1: Topic selection: Students choose specific subtopics within a general problem area.
Student then organize into two-to-six- member task-oriented groups.
Step 2: Cooperative planning: Students and the teachers plan specific learning procedures, tasks, and goals consistent with the subtopics of the problem.
Step 3: Implementation: Students carry out the plan with a wide variety of activities and skills. The teachers can give them assistance when needed.
Step 4: Analysis and synthesis: Students analyze and evaluate information obtained and plan to display or present to their classmates.
Step 5: Presentation of final product: Some or all of the groups in the class give an interesting presentation of the topics.
Step 6: Evaluation: Students and the teachers evaluate each group‟s contribution to their work. Evaluation can include either individual or group assessment, or both.
3.3.1.5 Roundtable
Roundtable is the activity from Structure Approach of Kagan (1994). In this activity, students take turns giving answers, providing information or sharing ideas. In a Roundtable, students offer their written contributions, sharing one piece of paper and a pencil and passing them so that each student provides a written contribution. Turns continue until everyone has run out of ideas or time is called.
Summary
This chapter summarizes the main challenges in using CL in Nghe An Teachers' College according to students' perceptions. These challenges include students' learning habits and learning styles which may lead to their reluctance in learning cooperatively, group conflicts and the habits of using L1 in groupwork. In order to address these challenges, some practical suggessions for classroom practices are also presented. The next chapter presents the conclusion of the study.