PEER MANAGEMENT TRAINING

Cooperative Language Learning

Presented by: HAN Piseth

April 24th, 2015

ContentsI. Background II. The Approach

1. Theory of language2. Theory of learning

III. Design 1. Objectives2. Syllabus3. Learning and Teaching Activities4. Roles of Learners 5. Roles of Teacher6. Roles Instructional Materials

IV. Conclustion

Background

• It is an approach that makes maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in the classroom.

Key Features

• Raise the achievement of all students, including those who are gifted or academically handicapped.

• Help the teacher build positive relationships among students.

• Give students the experiences they need for healthy social, psychological and cognitive development.

• Replace the competitive organizational structure of most classrooms and schools with a team-based, high performance organizational structure.

Goals of Cooperative Language Learning

• To provide opportunities for naturalistic second language acquisition through the use of interactive pair and group activities.

• To provide teachers with a methodology to enable them to achieve this goal and one that can be applied in a variety of curriculum settings (e.g., content-based, foreign language classrooms).

• To enable focused attention to particular lexical items, language structures, and communicative functions through the use of interactive tasks.

• To provide opportunities for learners to develop successful learning and communication strategies.

• To enhance learner motivation and reduce learner stress and to create a positive affective classroom climate.

Approach

Theory of Language Interactive View (Founded in some basic

premises).

• Premise 1: Born to talk (primary purpose is to communicate).

• Premise 2: Conversation (most talk/speech).

• Premise 3: Conversation operated according to cooperative rules or “maxims”

• Premise 4: Cooperative maxim realized in one’s native language (L1): Everyday Conversation inter..

• Premise 5: Cooperative maxim realize in L2: through cooperatively structured interactional activities.

Approach

Theory of Learning Social interaction in learning: (Jean Piaget and

Vygotsky) by structure situation, interactive structure, and Question Matrix (Bloom).

To achieve what?

• Critical thinking skill, communication competence, language skill, social skills, mental development.

Design

Objectives

Cooperation rather than competition

Critical thinking skills

Communicative Competence

The Syllabus

Not assume particular form of language syllabus

CLL used in teaching content class, ESP, Four skills, Grammar, Pronunciation, Vocabulary.

CLL is defined because it is systematic and carefully planed use of group-based procedures. (Not teacher fronted)

To achieve group-based procedure, three types of cooperative learning group defined by Johnson et al:

1. Formal Cooperative learning group: one period to several weeks. (Specific task involve students working together to achieve share learning goal.

Group assignment, Group projects, and some other similar tasks.

2. Informal Cooperative Learning Group: a few minutes to a class period (facilitate the direct teaching)

3. Cooperative base groups: at least one year. Support each other to achieve academic goal

Role play, Group Discussion. Overall, activities in one class session.

Achieving the successful group-based learning in CL, Olsen and Kagan (1992) proposed the following elements:

Positive Interdependence: fail one fail all, mutual support. Example, single product like score.

Group formation: deciding group size, assigning students to group, student roles in group.

Individual Accountability: individual and group performance.

Social Skill: the way students interact as teammates. Need social skills to have successful interaction.

Structuring and structures: ways of organizing students interaction.

Ways of organizing students interaction: (Olsen and Kagan) (1992:88)

Three-step interview:

1. Students are in pairs; one is interviewer and one is interviewee.

2. Students reverse roles

3. Each shares with team member what was learned during the two interviews.

Roundtable:

Think- Pair- Share

Solve- Pair- Share

Numbered Head:

Learner roles

Member of a group: working collaboratively on tasks with other group members. (Need Teamwork skills)

Director of there own learning: (Taught to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning.

Teacher roles Create a highly-structured and well-organized

learning environment.

Setting goals, planning and structuring the tasks, assigning students group roles, selecting materials….

Facilitator of learning.

Teacher speak less than in teacher fronted class. Post question to challenge critical thinking.

The role of instructional materials

Materials play an important part in creating opportunities for student to work cooperatively.

Materials might be specially designed for CLL learning (such as commercially sold jigsaw and information-gap activities, modified from existing materials, or borrowed from other disciplines.

Conclusion

In cooperative learning, group activities are the major mode of learning and system for the use of group work in teaching

Group activities are carefully planned to maximize student interaction and facilitate students 'contribution to each other' learning.

Communicative Competence

• In 1980, the applied linguists Canale and Swain published an influential article in which they argued that the ability to communicate required four different sub-competencies:

• grammatical (ability to create grammatically correct utterances),

• sociolinguistic (ability to produce sociolinguistically appropriate utterances),

• discourse (ability to produce coherent and cohesive utterances), and

• strategic (ability to solve communication problems as they arise).