It is well known that CL is a valuable approach to enhance your students’ Speaking skills. For this reason, I would like to share with you some of the advantages of using Cooperative groups to foster students’ interaction and develop oral skills in the foreign language.
Students usually express that speaking is one of the most challenging skill to develop in a foreign language. They are constantly afraid of making mistakes and feel insecure about their fluency and knowledge to achieve social interaction. This lack of confidence may be caused by the way they are learning the language. As we have already observed, there are several English classrooms that follow a traditional methodology in which students are passive agents in their learning process. In CL you are providing your student with the opportunity to be an active learner.
Moreover, by implementing CL, the common learning environment is transformed into a social and cooperative context where everyone’s role is essential to success. Hence, students have opportunities to interact and help each other, practicing their speaking skills while achieving common goals. Likewise, in cooperative groups students are able to exchange their ideas, thoughts, and perceptions. Finally, it is important to mention that aspects as shyness and anxiety can be reduced by eliminating the formal learning, where competition and grades are the principles of the class.
To exemplify the advantages of implementing CL in the foreign language classroom, Contreras and Chapetón (2016) conducted an action research study called Cooperative Learning with a Focus on the Social: A Pedagogical Proposal for the EFL Classroom, in a public school in Bogotá. In this research, you may evidence the impact of CL in students’ oral abilities in the foreign language, as the authors aimed to develop students’ oral interaction in the classroom. It is relevant to mention that, besides demonstrating the positive effect of this approach to foster interaction, they also found a great way to transform the context and the students’ attitudes towards their learning and their classmates. Therefore, we can conclude that CL is an approach that conceives the language as a social practice that might change students’ contexts and relationships while fostering language development.
However, I consider that CL is not a miraculous approach that works by its own in the transformation of traditional learning. We have to implement different strategies, methods, and tools that are closer to learners’ lives and realities in order to foster motivation and participation.
References:
Contreras, J & Chapetón, J. (2016). Cooperative Learning With a Focus on the Social: A Pedagogical Proposal for the EFL Classroom. How, 23(2), 125-147. https://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.23.2.321
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