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Abstract: With the aim of applying cooperative learning to improve the university students’ reading efficiency, we conducted a teaching experiment of cooperative learning. The results of the achievement test, interview and attitude investigation indicated that students exposed to the cooperative instructional methods reported significantly more favorable attitudes toward classroom instruction. Cooperative instruction not only improved the reading efficiency of the learners but also cultivated their team spirit and leadership.
Key words: non-English major students; cooperative learning; college English reading; effect
Reading is one of the important parts of English language learning. It is a form of linguistic input and therefore reading is a receptive skill. English reading for university students is not only an approach to obtain up-to-date information, but also an important way to broaden their mind. However, reading for university students is often quite difficult and their reading abilities are far from satisfactory. Poor reading hinders university students from improving their English proficiency and many students give up learning English due to reading difficulties. Because the current English teaching is scheduled in the first two years of university study and the students have to deal with listening, speaking, reading and writing simultaneously within this period, traditional reading teaching and learning strategies cannot help students master reading techniques and improve their reading efficiency. The situation makes it urgent to find proper and applicable methods to improve students’ reading abilities.
In this study, the author conducted a ten-week English reading cooperative learning in a first-year non-English major class consists of two majors (the students who are majored in the Lao and the Burmese) with a total of 48 students. Among them, forty are girl students, eight are boy students. The purpose of the study is to help the students improve their reading efficiency through cooperative learning and to investigate university students’ attitudes towards cooperative language learning. It is also aimed to carry out some useful exploration into cooperative learning in university English teaching.
1.Methodology and learning steps
The STAD model was employed in the survey.STAD was developed by Slavin (1995) and his associates at John Hopkins University. It has been used in such diverse subject areas as math, language and social studies. In STAD, students are assigned to four-member learning groups that are mixed in performance level, gender, and ethnicity. STAD has five major components: class presentation, group study, quizzes, individual improving scores, and team recognition. (Slavin, 1995) Cooperative learning begins with the presentation of material, usually in a lecture-discussion format. Students should be told what they should learn and why it is important. During group learning, group members work cooperatively with given worksheets and answer sheets. Next, each student takes a quiz independently. The teacher rates students’ scores and gives feedback information about students’ achievement. The awards the learning groups receive will be varied according to the progress they make within certain cooperative learning periods.
The instruments used were pre and post reading comprehension tests, the questionnaire of students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning, students’ attitude rating scale, and face-to-face interviews. During the cooperative learning period, thirty minutes was given to the cooperative learning groups in class and another thirty minutes was assigned to the students after class. Classroom learning was supervised by the teacher, after-class learning was supervised by the heads of the groups. The teacher would design a demonstrating model for the students to help them to follow in the after-class learning and the recorder would keep each group member’s learning. The process of the survey is reported as follows.
Before cooperative learning, a reading comprehension test (pre test) was given to the students. The total score of the test was 30 points, time scheduled was 60 minutes. Grouping is done according to the test scores. First, students were grouped in high, average, and low groups. Using mean, median, and mode to help group the students, altogether 12 groups were set up. The scores of the high groups ranged from 19 to 25. The scores of the average group ranged from 9 to 18. The scores of the low group ranged from 1 to 8. In order to form a cooperative and competitive learning atmosphere, the students were regrouped to ensure that each group had one or two high scorers to match with other two low scorers. After 10 weeks’ learning, a test (post test) with equivalent difficulty to the pre-test was given to the students.
Second, all the students took a quiz after each unit. They had to work independently on the quiz. By taking quizzes, the teacher may have a better understanding of the students’ learning and rewards of a different token were awarded to the learning groups according to their performance. The score of the first quiz was considered as the base score to make it easy to compare students learning.
Third, the students responded to a questionnaire containing 10 items which related to their opinions towards reading cooperative learning. With the completion of the questionnaire, the teacher clarified some questions raised in cooperative learning.
Finally, in order to examine students’ cooperative learning behaviors, a behavioral rating scale was handed out after each unit. All group members assess their teammates according to their performance of learning in the group. Face-to-face interviews were also conducted with eight students whose post testing scores improved the most and least to reflect their opinions about cooperative learning.
2.Empirical results
As soon as the ten weeks’ cooperative learning finished, we analyzed and interpreted the data collected from the pre and post tests, questionnaires, and behavioral rating scales by using Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) in responding to the research questions.
Research Question 1: To what degree does cooperative learning help the students improve their reading efficiency?
Table 1 Means of the Pre and Post test of the Students
6．43sig.= .05, t(.05, df=34)）= 1.543
From Table 1 we can see that the mean score of the post-test is obviously higher than that of the pre-test and the Standard Deviation of the post-test is lower than pre-test, which means the inner difference of the students is smaller than before cooperative learning was introduced. Also the Independent-Samples T Test reflects the significance of cooperative learning in improving students’ reading efficiency. The result proved the effectiveness of cooperative learning when English reading is involved.
Research Question 2: What are the students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning? The descriptive statistics of the following table reflects students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning. (Table 2)
Mean levels: 1.00－1.80＝minimally agree；1.81－2.60＝generally agree；2.61－3.40＝neutral；3.41－4.20＝moderately agree；4.21－5.00＝strongly agree
Table 2 reflects the first-year non-English major students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning. The questions students agree the most are question No 2 and question No 5. The question students disagree most is No 10. Generally speaking, the average mean of attitude score was 3.28, which means students are pro to cooperative learning.
The following table displays the percentage of students’ attitudes rating scale of cooperative learning. (Table 3)
We can obtain a clear judgment of students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning from the percentage shown in Table 3. It tells us that 35 per cent of the students are neutral to cooperative learning, whereas 37 per cent of them are strongly pro to cooperative learning and only 2.5 per cent strongly disagree to cooperative learning. To sum up, only 7 per cent of the students were against to cooperative learning held in the class.
Research Question 3: To what extent did the students cooperative in cooperative learning?
As is well known, the completion of certain task is not the only criterion to check students’ learning achievement; participation is another parameter to judge the effectiveness of cooperative learning, also. Without the full participation of all the group members, the effectiveness of cooperative learning will be greatly decreased. In order to check the students’ participation of cooperative learning, we assessed their learning behavior through a mutual evaluating form. The Likert Rating Scale was used in measuring students’ learning behavior. The following table is the descriptive statistics of students’ cooperative learning behavior. (Table 4)
Mean levels: 1.00—1.80 = minimally participate; 1.81—2.60 = generally participate; 2.61—3.40 = neutral; 3.41—4.20 = moderately participate; 4.21—5.00 = highly participate
Table 4 reflects students’ participation in cooperative learning. The average (3.56) indicates that the extent of students’ participation is above mean level. The members of Group 7 were highly cooperative in cooperative learning whereas the members of Group 10 were minimally cooperative.
What has been shown above was the quantitative survey of the effect of cooperative learning in helping university students with their English reading. With the purposes of fully investigating the effectiveness of cooperative learning in improving students’ reading efficiency, we also had some qualitative surveys of individual student’s responses to cooperative learning. Face-to-face interviews were therefore used to investigate eight randomly selected students with the standard on individual’s different achievement after cooperative learning. Four students whose reading had been improved most and another four whose reading improved least were selected. The interview questions are about the merits and demerits of cooperative learning and students’ reflection on it. Alex Li, who had made greatest progress holds that cooperative learning is a good way to discuss with peer students and to obtain new knowledge. Van Shi thinks that she could learn a lot from peer students through cooperative learning. Ann Wang maintains that cooperative learning makes English reading more interesting and she also pointed out that it is a highly demanding task which needs good designing and preparations. James Wu also responded with positive remarks to cooperative learning. Lisa Zhang thinks that she was too timid and dare not share her opinion with teammates. Day after day she felt unconfident and alienated. Pam Zhou responded negatively to cooperative learning because he thought the reading materials were too easy for him and he needed more challenging reading tasks. Ed Fan was against cooperative learning, because he hates to “quarrel” with teammates and he was impatient with waiting for teammates’ opinions. Steve Liu felt it too difficult to catch up with teammates and finally he gave up group work.
3.Discussion
Compared with the previous studies of cooperative language learning, the present one possesses several merits. Firstly, the study is more to the point, which means it elaborated reading as the specific area of investigation. What other Chinese scholars have done is too general because they scarcely touched upon the specific part of English study. Secondly, the present study took reading as the focus of investigation, which has never been reported in previous literature. Thirdly, we synthesized qualitative and quantitative approaches in the study, which is more efficient to test the effectiveness of the cooperative learning in college English classroom.
It is inevitable that teaching experiment will always be accompanied by limitations. The one we have done was dwarfed by the limitations as follows. The first limitation is that the study carried out was conducted in a small class and the students were language majors. Second, only one model was tried in the study which has been proved effective; other models as TGT and Jigsaw II need to be tested in future studies. The range of the participants should be expanded to other students of different majors and different levels. More items like speaking, listening and writing need to be tried to check the effectiveness of cooperative learning among university students. More male students’ attitudes towards and reflections on cooperative learning need to be investigated in future studies.
References
[1]Johnson, D., Johnson, R., & Holbec, E. Cooperation in the classroom (6th ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company, 1993.
[2]Slavin, R. E. Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.
Key words: non-English major students; cooperative learning; college English reading; effect
Reading is one of the important parts of English language learning. It is a form of linguistic input and therefore reading is a receptive skill. English reading for university students is not only an approach to obtain up-to-date information, but also an important way to broaden their mind. However, reading for university students is often quite difficult and their reading abilities are far from satisfactory. Poor reading hinders university students from improving their English proficiency and many students give up learning English due to reading difficulties. Because the current English teaching is scheduled in the first two years of university study and the students have to deal with listening, speaking, reading and writing simultaneously within this period, traditional reading teaching and learning strategies cannot help students master reading techniques and improve their reading efficiency. The situation makes it urgent to find proper and applicable methods to improve students’ reading abilities.
In this study, the author conducted a ten-week English reading cooperative learning in a first-year non-English major class consists of two majors (the students who are majored in the Lao and the Burmese) with a total of 48 students. Among them, forty are girl students, eight are boy students. The purpose of the study is to help the students improve their reading efficiency through cooperative learning and to investigate university students’ attitudes towards cooperative language learning. It is also aimed to carry out some useful exploration into cooperative learning in university English teaching.
1.Methodology and learning steps
The STAD model was employed in the survey.STAD was developed by Slavin (1995) and his associates at John Hopkins University. It has been used in such diverse subject areas as math, language and social studies. In STAD, students are assigned to four-member learning groups that are mixed in performance level, gender, and ethnicity. STAD has five major components: class presentation, group study, quizzes, individual improving scores, and team recognition. (Slavin, 1995) Cooperative learning begins with the presentation of material, usually in a lecture-discussion format. Students should be told what they should learn and why it is important. During group learning, group members work cooperatively with given worksheets and answer sheets. Next, each student takes a quiz independently. The teacher rates students’ scores and gives feedback information about students’ achievement. The awards the learning groups receive will be varied according to the progress they make within certain cooperative learning periods.
The instruments used were pre and post reading comprehension tests, the questionnaire of students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning, students’ attitude rating scale, and face-to-face interviews. During the cooperative learning period, thirty minutes was given to the cooperative learning groups in class and another thirty minutes was assigned to the students after class. Classroom learning was supervised by the teacher, after-class learning was supervised by the heads of the groups. The teacher would design a demonstrating model for the students to help them to follow in the after-class learning and the recorder would keep each group member’s learning. The process of the survey is reported as follows.
Before cooperative learning, a reading comprehension test (pre test) was given to the students. The total score of the test was 30 points, time scheduled was 60 minutes. Grouping is done according to the test scores. First, students were grouped in high, average, and low groups. Using mean, median, and mode to help group the students, altogether 12 groups were set up. The scores of the high groups ranged from 19 to 25. The scores of the average group ranged from 9 to 18. The scores of the low group ranged from 1 to 8. In order to form a cooperative and competitive learning atmosphere, the students were regrouped to ensure that each group had one or two high scorers to match with other two low scorers. After 10 weeks’ learning, a test (post test) with equivalent difficulty to the pre-test was given to the students.
Second, all the students took a quiz after each unit. They had to work independently on the quiz. By taking quizzes, the teacher may have a better understanding of the students’ learning and rewards of a different token were awarded to the learning groups according to their performance. The score of the first quiz was considered as the base score to make it easy to compare students learning.
Third, the students responded to a questionnaire containing 10 items which related to their opinions towards reading cooperative learning. With the completion of the questionnaire, the teacher clarified some questions raised in cooperative learning.
Finally, in order to examine students’ cooperative learning behaviors, a behavioral rating scale was handed out after each unit. All group members assess their teammates according to their performance of learning in the group. Face-to-face interviews were also conducted with eight students whose post testing scores improved the most and least to reflect their opinions about cooperative learning.
2.Empirical results
As soon as the ten weeks’ cooperative learning finished, we analyzed and interpreted the data collected from the pre and post tests, questionnaires, and behavioral rating scales by using Statistical Packages for the Social Sciences (SPSS) in responding to the research questions.
Research Question 1: To what degree does cooperative learning help the students improve their reading efficiency?
Table 1 Means of the Pre and Post test of the Students
6．43sig.= .05, t(.05, df=34)）= 1.543
From Table 1 we can see that the mean score of the post-test is obviously higher than that of the pre-test and the Standard Deviation of the post-test is lower than pre-test, which means the inner difference of the students is smaller than before cooperative learning was introduced. Also the Independent-Samples T Test reflects the significance of cooperative learning in improving students’ reading efficiency. The result proved the effectiveness of cooperative learning when English reading is involved.
Research Question 2: What are the students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning? The descriptive statistics of the following table reflects students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning. (Table 2)
Mean levels: 1.00－1.80＝minimally agree；1.81－2.60＝generally agree；2.61－3.40＝neutral；3.41－4.20＝moderately agree；4.21－5.00＝strongly agree
Table 2 reflects the first-year non-English major students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning. The questions students agree the most are question No 2 and question No 5. The question students disagree most is No 10. Generally speaking, the average mean of attitude score was 3.28, which means students are pro to cooperative learning.
The following table displays the percentage of students’ attitudes rating scale of cooperative learning. (Table 3)
We can obtain a clear judgment of students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning from the percentage shown in Table 3. It tells us that 35 per cent of the students are neutral to cooperative learning, whereas 37 per cent of them are strongly pro to cooperative learning and only 2.5 per cent strongly disagree to cooperative learning. To sum up, only 7 per cent of the students were against to cooperative learning held in the class.
Research Question 3: To what extent did the students cooperative in cooperative learning?
As is well known, the completion of certain task is not the only criterion to check students’ learning achievement; participation is another parameter to judge the effectiveness of cooperative learning, also. Without the full participation of all the group members, the effectiveness of cooperative learning will be greatly decreased. In order to check the students’ participation of cooperative learning, we assessed their learning behavior through a mutual evaluating form. The Likert Rating Scale was used in measuring students’ learning behavior. The following table is the descriptive statistics of students’ cooperative learning behavior. (Table 4)
Mean levels: 1.00—1.80 = minimally participate; 1.81—2.60 = generally participate; 2.61—3.40 = neutral; 3.41—4.20 = moderately participate; 4.21—5.00 = highly participate
Table 4 reflects students’ participation in cooperative learning. The average (3.56) indicates that the extent of students’ participation is above mean level. The members of Group 7 were highly cooperative in cooperative learning whereas the members of Group 10 were minimally cooperative.
What has been shown above was the quantitative survey of the effect of cooperative learning in helping university students with their English reading. With the purposes of fully investigating the effectiveness of cooperative learning in improving students’ reading efficiency, we also had some qualitative surveys of individual student’s responses to cooperative learning. Face-to-face interviews were therefore used to investigate eight randomly selected students with the standard on individual’s different achievement after cooperative learning. Four students whose reading had been improved most and another four whose reading improved least were selected. The interview questions are about the merits and demerits of cooperative learning and students’ reflection on it. Alex Li, who had made greatest progress holds that cooperative learning is a good way to discuss with peer students and to obtain new knowledge. Van Shi thinks that she could learn a lot from peer students through cooperative learning. Ann Wang maintains that cooperative learning makes English reading more interesting and she also pointed out that it is a highly demanding task which needs good designing and preparations. James Wu also responded with positive remarks to cooperative learning. Lisa Zhang thinks that she was too timid and dare not share her opinion with teammates. Day after day she felt unconfident and alienated. Pam Zhou responded negatively to cooperative learning because he thought the reading materials were too easy for him and he needed more challenging reading tasks. Ed Fan was against cooperative learning, because he hates to “quarrel” with teammates and he was impatient with waiting for teammates’ opinions. Steve Liu felt it too difficult to catch up with teammates and finally he gave up group work.
3.Discussion
Compared with the previous studies of cooperative language learning, the present one possesses several merits. Firstly, the study is more to the point, which means it elaborated reading as the specific area of investigation. What other Chinese scholars have done is too general because they scarcely touched upon the specific part of English study. Secondly, the present study took reading as the focus of investigation, which has never been reported in previous literature. Thirdly, we synthesized qualitative and quantitative approaches in the study, which is more efficient to test the effectiveness of the cooperative learning in college English classroom.
It is inevitable that teaching experiment will always be accompanied by limitations. The one we have done was dwarfed by the limitations as follows. The first limitation is that the study carried out was conducted in a small class and the students were language majors. Second, only one model was tried in the study which has been proved effective; other models as TGT and Jigsaw II need to be tested in future studies. The range of the participants should be expanded to other students of different majors and different levels. More items like speaking, listening and writing need to be tried to check the effectiveness of cooperative learning among university students. More male students’ attitudes towards and reflections on cooperative learning need to be investigated in future studies.
References
[1]Johnson, D., Johnson, R., & Holbec, E. Cooperation in the classroom (6th ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company, 1993.
[2]Slavin, R. E. Cooperative Learning: Theory, Research, and Practice. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.