Cooperative Learning in foreign language teaching - Jette Stenlev

... is learning in small groups where interaction is structured according to carefully worked-out principles.

To ensure optimum opportunities for interaction, cooperative learning takes place in small teams, often of four students. This makes pair work possible within the team, and this face-to-face interaction is a very important element. It is recommended that the teams work together for a while and team-building exercises are used to induce a team spirit that contributes to motivating students to help each other.

The foundation of cooperative learning is structures. But what is meant by a structure? A structure is a content-free way in which one can organise interaction between individuals. An example could be the Round Robin structure, which is when team members do a round in which they in turn suggest, for example, an answer to a task or ideas for a brainstorming session. A Round Robin is often one step in a multi-step structure. An example is Think-Pair-Square, where the pupils first think individually, then share their thoughts with a partner and finally do a Round Robin in the team.

Why are structures so important? Structures control our behaviour to a great extent, and different structures elicit different forms of behaviour such as active/passive and social/asocial behaviour. Far too much of what goes on in school is training in asocial behaviour via competitive situations. One persons wins if the other loses. The class conversation, for example, is a competitive structure: it encourages students to compete against each other for the teacher’s attention and permission to answer. Only the strongest have a chance here, which is why many opt out. Somewhat simplistically, one could say that the structure encourages asocial behaviour and passivity. Interaction in pairs, on the other hand, will normally be a cooperative structure. It is hard to be passive in a situation where the task is, for example, to interview each other in pairs. Cooperation and social behaviour arise naturally here.

The four basic principles in the structures

But what precisely are the mechanisms that make a structure cooperative? There are four principles that ought to be observed in every structure, no matter its aim. These are:

1) Simultaneous interaction: Most students possible ought to be ‘on’ at the same time. The optimal form is pair work, which is very frequently included as a stage in the various structures. The classic example of the opposite is the teacher-controlled class conversation, where the individual student, to slightly oversimplify, ‘waits in line’ for 44 minutes so as to be ‘on’ for one minute. Simultaneous interaction can easily increase the student’s speaking time tenfold or twentyfold.

2) Equal participation: As a rule, the structures are constructed so that everyone can contribute equally, with no one being forgotten or opting out. Once again, class teaching can illustrate the opposite: here the students volunteer and those who most need to practise speaking are usually those who say least - often nothing at all. In ordinary group work, ensuring equal participation is a well-known problem.

3) Positive interdependence: The structures are built up in such a way that the stu- dents in a team need each other’s output if they are to solve the task they have been given. The contribution of each student is a piece of the total work. This means that everyone has an interest not only in explaining their knowledge to the others but in extracting knowledge from the others until they have understood each other. This push-pull mechanism is an effective ‘engine’ in the interaction that is lacking in class conversation.

4) Individual accountability: The estructures give each student an important role in the interactional pattern. No one can opt out without this having consequences for the others. Individual accountability is one of the most important motivating fac- tors in cooperative learning. Everyone likes to feel that they know something others can use, and everyone gets the chance of showing this precisely via the structures. Individual accountability is also implemented when students are being individually assessed in various assignments or tests.

Cooperative learning in foreign language teaching

In our context, it is particularly interesting how cooperative learning can contribute to attaining better learning results in foreign language teaching.

Let us look at some concrete examples of cooperative-learning structures used in foreign language teaching.

3-Step Interview

Step 1: Pair-work: student A interviews student B.

Step 2: Partners switch roles

Step 3: Team work: Round Robin: the students explain in turn what their partner said.

‘3-step interview’ is categorised as an information-sharing structure. It can be used to process material in numerous ways. One example could be that the students in- terview each other about which of the two tales they have read they like the better and why, which person in a short story they find most appealing/realistic/interest- ing and why, etc. In the process, the person being interviewed will not only have to express himself or herself in the target language - (s)he will also become involved in an interpretation process. One could also imagine the students interviewing each other about what they would consider working on if they themselves were to plan the next sequence, etc.

Travelling Heads Together

Step 1: The team is given a task. They discuss until they arrive at an answer and make sure they all agree about it and can defend it.

Step 2: A student from each team (e.g. with the aid of a student selector5) goes to the next group, where (s)he explains the team’s answer.

Travelling heads together is a variation of the structure Numbered Heads Together, which is categorised as a Mastery structure. In the original structure, where the selected student gives the answer to the whole class, the emphasis is on the work done in the first team to master the material. But when the student is instead sent on to the next team, the structure becomes just as much an information-sharing structure, as the presentation to the new team is not only proof of the material having been mastered but also a sharing of this new knowledge. One can thus choose to let various teams work on various questions and share the answers in this way.

Inside-Outside Circle:

Step 1: The students work in teams on certain material.

Step 2: The students form two big circles on the floor, one inside the other. If, for example, there are 6 teams of 4 students, 3 teams form the inner circle and the other 3 the outer circle. The inner circle looks outwards, the outer circle inwards. Each person in the inner circle has a partner in the outer circle. The students now exchange material or discuss with their partner.

Step 3: The students in the outer circle (or inner circle) move 4 persons to the right (or left), so that everyone is now facing a new partner. Material is exchanged with the new partner.

Inside-outside circle is one of the most versatile structures. It appears under the cat- egories Class building, Mastery and Information sharing. It is very good for getting the pupils/students to feel relaxed with each other in a new class, where one can, for example, use it to get them to talk about themselves in English. If so, Stage 1, of course, is removed and the rotation is one person at a time - as long as one wishes.

But it is not only the oral side of communicative competence that is taken account of in cooperative learning. The written side is, too. As far as reading is concerned, this is achieved by the structures often being used in connection with the reading of texts, which either takes place beforehand or, for example, in a cooperative reading structure. Written skills are developed i.a. by written processes being built into the structures, so Round Robin, for example, becomes a Round Table where every pupil writes instead of speaking, or Think-pair-square becomes Write-pair-square, where the first stage is to write something down that then forms the basis of further discus- sion in pairs and in teams.

Linguistic awareness

Another point that can be important in this connection is that cooperative learning does not only offer language acquisition as something that, so to speak, ‘happens on its own while the students are talking about something else’. Even though language acquisition occurs to a great extent in this way, most people agree that from time to time there is a need for working in a more focused way on linguistic phenomena. This is also taken account of in cooperative learning, as the structures - which are without content - can also, in principle, have for instance a grammatical problem as their content.

There are plenty of structures that are excellently suited to this work. One example of a relevant structure could be Pairs Check, where the students alternately solve a task while thinking aloud, and the partner listens in and approves the task when it  has been satisfactorily solved, after which they exchange roles for the next task. A structure like Flash Card Game could also be relevant: Here the students have written down the things they need to learn on personal cards, and are then ‘trained’ by their partner, who uses ‘exaggerated praise’ as motivation in the form of a range of enthusiastic exclamations such as: ‘Excellent!’, ‘You did a terrific job!’, ‘You keep amazing me!’ etc,... (the challenge being to use a new eulogising expression each time) until the student has won all his cards back by replying correctly. A somewhat behaviouristic touch, perhaps, but one that the students love. There are also such structures as Turn-4-Thought, a kind of game where the students are handed out a sheet of paper with questions, but where cards taken from various piles decide which of the four team members is to ask a question, answer it, give feedback and give more detailed explanations. This game can apparently motivate the students no matter what it is that has to be learned - even the use of relative pronouns (!) Finally, a number of communicative language exercises are very close to cooperative learning in their construction and with slight adaptations would be bona fide cooperative learning activities if so desired.