Cooperative Learning in Language Education - George Jacobs & Willy Renandya

TEFLIN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT SERIES
Series Editors: Willy A Renandya & Nur Hayati

Assistant Editor: Rahmati Putri Yaniafari
TEFLIN Teacher Development Series contains short practical resource booklets for
English language teachers in Asia published by TEFLIN (The Association for the
Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia) through its Publication
Division. Printed titles in the first batch of the series (2019) include:
Introducing Task-based Language Teaching by Rod Ellis

Evaluating, Adapting and Developing Materials for Learners of English as an International
Language by Brian Tomlinson
Cooperative Learning in Language Education by George M Jacobs & Willy A Renandya
Teaching Pragmatics in EFL Classrooms by Nguyen Thi Thuy Minh & Le Van Canh
If you have any queries, please contact:

TEFLIN Publication Division
Email: publication.division@teflin.org
Copyright © 2019
TEFLIN Publication Division in collaboration with Bintang Sejahtera Press
c/o Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra, Universitas Negeri Malang
Jalan Semarang 5 Malang, East Java, Indonesia, 65145
http://www.journal.teflin.org
ISBN: 978-602-1150-28-3
First published 2019

Cover Designer: Himawan Prakosa
Formatting: Ibnuz Zaki
Cooperative Learning in Language Education
George M Jacobs & Willy A Renandya

James Cook University, Singapore
National Institute of Education, Singapore
TEFLIN Teacher Development Series

published by
TEFLIN Publication Division
I
t is a great pleasure for TEFLIN to publish this Teacher Development
Series, a series which provides useful and affordable resources for
English language teachers and teacher educators in Asia. The
booklets in the series cover various topics pertaining to ELT and are
written by experts in the field. Teachers and teacher educators will enjoy
reading the series as the booklets are written in a friendly and accessible
style.
Throughout more than sixty years of TEFLIN, we have shown our full
commitment towards teacher training and education and teacher
professional development in the field of ELT by means of various
programs. We have organized conferences and academic forums for
English language teachers both nationally and internationally, and
collaborated with different organizations to provide support for teachers
in developing their professionalism, such as, by giving scholarships to
attend conferences and conducting teacher training.
Through the TEFLIN Publication Division, we have published volumes

of the TEFLIN Journal, a peer-reviewed journal indexed in Scopus and
fully accredited with an “A” rating by the Indonesian Ministry of Research
and Higher Education. The journal contains both research and concept
papers in the field of ELT. This TEFLIN Teacher Development Series is
another project of the division and is yet another form of our
commitment to giving continued support to the development of English
a
Teacher Development Series
language teaching in Indonesia and in the wider region. This year we are
aiming to launch five books of the series, and are committed to
publishing more titles in the following years to support teachers’
sustainable professional development.
We are indebted to Dr Willy A Renandya for sharing with us his

brilliant ideas and for giving his utmost effort and lending his expertise to
this project. Without his capacity and networking, this project would not
be possible. We also gratefully thank all the experts who have
contributed to the series. Their contribution is invaluable.
We hope this series will serve its purpose, to empower English

teachers and facilitate their professional development through quality
and accessible resources.
Joko Nurkamto Yazid Basthomi

President of TEFLIN Coordinator of TEFLIN Publication Division
Cooperative Learning in Language Education ii

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T
he TEFLIN Teacher Development Series is a series of short practical
resource booklets for English language teachers in Asia as part of a
collaborative project with the Publication Division of TEFLIN (The
Association for the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language in
Indonesia). The booklets (or modules) are intended to be used by
teachers (both pre-service and in-service) and teacher educators as a
learning resource and as a basis for organizing workshops, in-service
courses and various other purposes of teaching and learning and teacher
professional development.
The booklets in the Series are written in an accessible and teacher-

friendly style and cover both principles and techniques and include
different topics relevant to ELT and teacher professional development.
Each booklet contains practical ways for teachers to apply new ideas in
their own teaching as well as reflective tasks that provide opportunities
for the users to reflect on their own classroom practices.
For the first batch of the series, we have had a great honor and
pleasure to work with experts in various areas of ELT. One of the books in
the series is written by George M Jacobs and Willy A Renandya, ELT
experts from two prominent institutions in Singapore. They discuss in
their book essential principles and practical strategies to implement
cooperative learning in the language classroom as well as address some
common challenges and teachers’ concerns regarding the topic. We
Cooperative Learning in Language Education iii

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found the contents of the book very relevant and applicable, and we
believe that the book will inspire teachers and teacher educators to learn
more about cooperative learning, try out the ideas in their classrooms
and share the results with their colleagues.
We would like to again extend our utmost gratitude to Dr George M

Jacobs as well as other experts who have contributed to the Series for
their kindness and generosity in sharing their knowledge and expertise
and helping make this project happen. We are committed to publishing
more quality booklets in the coming years in the coming years in order to
meet the needs of English teachers and teacher educators in Asia. We
hope to collaborate with many more experts in various areas of ELT and
publish booklets that are affordable and beneficial for the development
of ELT and teacher professionalism particularly in the Asian region.
Willy A Renandya
Nur Hayati
Cooperative Learning in Language Education iv

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FOREWORD FROM THE PUBLISHERS .......................................................................ii

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE .................................................................... iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................... vi
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................. 1
CHAPTER ONE Eight Advantages of Students Learning Together ............................ 3
CHAPTER TWO Eight Principles for Designing Successful Group Activities ............... 9
CHAPTER THREE Eight Management Tools for Building Effective Groups ................. 21
CHAPTER FOUR Eight Techniques for Organizing Student-Student
Interaction .......................................................................................... 30
CHAPTER FIVE Eight Essential Cooperative Skills That Students Need to Use
in Their Groups ...................................................................................... 40
CHAPTER SIX Eight Potential Problems That Can Occur in Groups ............................ 45
CHAPTER SEVEN Eight Connections between CL and Other Student Centred
Ways to Learn ..................................................................................... 50
CHAPTER EIGHT Eight Concerns Teachers Have About CL .......................................... 59
CHAPTER NINE Conclusion .......................................................................................... 68
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................. 71
Cooperative Learning in Language Education v

C
ooperative Learning (CL) involves students in learning together and
helping each other enjoy learning. Research suggests that CL can be a
powerful way to promote student success and students’ liking for
learning. Furthermore, key hypotheses in Second Language Acquisition theory
support the use of CL. These hypotheses include the Comprehensible Input
Hypothesis, the Interaction Hypothesis, and the Output Hypothesis (Jacobs &
McCafferty, 2006). These are briefly explained in the next paragraph.
The Input Hypothesis states that in order to learn a new language, students
need to receive large amounts of language input (via listening and/or reading),
and they need to understand that input. CL helps here, because in CL students
can receive input not only from teachers and teaching materials but also from
peers. Furthermore, peers can help make this input more comprehensible. This
peer assistance links to the Interaction Hypothesis which states that students
need opportunities to work with others to clarify what they hear and read. As
students interact with each other in CL groups, they also produce large amounts
of language output (via speaking and writing). The Output Hypothesis states that
learners need these output opportunities to try out their emerging language
competence.
While this book has a firm basis in research and theory, it is mostly a very
practical book. We, the authors, have collected practical ideas about the use of
CL and put them into eight chapters of eight ideas each. Here are the chapter
titles:
1. Eight Advantages of Students Learning Together – what are key potential

benefits of including group activities as part of second language learning and
teaching.
Cooperative Learning in Language Education 1

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2. Eight Principles for Designing Successful Group Activities – what are

important guidelines to bear in mind when teaching via group activities.
3. Eight Management Tools for Building Effective Groups – how to lay a strong
foundation for students to benefit from learning with peers.
4. Eight Techniques for Organizing Student-Student Interaction – how to

organize the way students interact, such as how they take turns and what
they talk about.
5. Eight Essential Cooperative Skills that Students Need to Use in their Groups –
what skills students need to be good groupmates and how they can learn
those skills.
6. Eight Potential Problems that Can Occur in Groups – what difficulties that
may arise when students interact with their peers and how to overcome
those difficulties.
7. Eight Connections between CL and Other Student Centred Ways to Learn –

how CL links with other student centred changes in language education.
8. Eight Concerns Teachers Have about CL – what difficulties teachers have

about CL and our suggestions for dealing with these.
Each chapter of this book focuses on one of these eight groups of eight ideas
about CL for a total of 64 ideas. These 64 ideas provide teachers with a strong
foundation in both the why and how of CL. The why explains the benefits of CL,
and the how explains how to achieve those benefits. In addition to this book,
you can learn more about CL from talking to your colleagues, your students and
listening to your own observations and insights.

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David Johnson of the Cooperative Learning Institute of the University of

Minnesota, along with his brothers Roger and Frank Johnson and their sister
Edith Holubec, have been leaders in CL research, practical applications, and
teacher development for almost 50 years. Professor David Johnson has done
many workshops in Asia, including Southeast Asia. He stated that CL is the most
researched methods in all of education. Indeed, thousands of studies have been
done with students of many ages in many subject areas in many countries.
These studies suggest that when students learn together, they learn more and
they also gain in affective variables (Dörnyei & Ushioda, 2013; Slavin, 2014).
Affect involves emotions, and studies have investigated such affective variables
as self-esteem, liking for school and liking for classmates, including classmates
from different ethnic groups.
This chapter looks more closely at eight potential advantages of students
learning together under CL conditions. By CL conditions, we mean that the
students work as a group who care about each other’s learning. The eight
potential advantages described in this chapter are:
1. Students are more active
2. Students receive more help
3. Students think more deeply
4. Students are more motivated
5. Students enjoy learning more

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6. Students feel less anxiety

7. Students become more independent
8. Students learn more.
Students Are More Active

Three concepts regarding what helps students learn new languages are that
students need to:
1. Hear and read a lot in the new language and to understand what they hear
and read.
2. Interact with others to make what they hear and read understandable; for
example, students need to ask question when something that they read or
hear is not clear.
3. Speak and write in the new language and see if what they have said and
written is understandable by others.
Thus, students need to be active: listening, reading, speaking and writing,
and helping themselves and others understand what is said and written.
Group activities give students many more opportunities to be active. In the
typical class with 50 students in the typical teacher centred mode of teaching,
only one student speaks at a time. Of course, the teacher speaks about 80% of
the time. Thus, in a one hour class, 80% of 60 minutes is 48 minutes in which
the teacher is speaking. That leaves only 20% of the time (12 minutes) for
students to speak. With 50 students divided into 12 minutes, each student has
15 seconds to speak or interact with their classmates.
In contrast, with group activities, teachers speak less. Maybe teachers speak
only 50% of the one hour of class time: 30 minutes. That means that students
also have 30 minutes to speak, but instead of one student speaking at a time, if
the 50 students are in groups of two, 25 students can be talking at one time. If
students are in groups of four, about 12 students are talking at one time. Thus,
students can be more active.

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Not only are students more active; they are also playing more roles. This
means they are using more language functions. For instance, in their groups,
students are thanking others, praising others, giving feedback, asking for
feedback, giving reasons, and asking for repetition, such as saying, “Would you
please say that again?” These language functions connect to a second advantage
of group activities.
Students Receive More Help

Learning a new language is difficult. Unfortunately, one teacher cannot give
much individual assistance to an entire class of students. Teachers do not have
time to check every student’s answer or respond to every student’s worry.
However, in groups, the partners are right there to help each other (e.g., asking
the meaning of an unfamiliar word or the spelling of a new word they have just
heard) and to praise each other for what they have done. Providing this help,
such as giving explanations, is not easy. That leads to the next advantage of
group activities.
Students Think More Deeply

In order to help groupmates, students cannot just give each other answers. It
is like the proverb, “Give someone a bowl of rice, and they can eat for a day, but
teach someone how to grow rice and they can eat for a lifetime.” Similarly, in
groups, “Tell a partner an answer, and they can answer correctly one time, but
teach them to understand how to find the answer, and they can answer
correctly many times.” In addition, when students teach each other, they also
learn because as every teacher knows from their personal experience, “Those
who teach learn twice.”
Teaching is not easy; it requires deep thinking to explain, to give examples,

and to provide feedback. In this way, group activities encourage students to
think more deeply. Teachers can help students to do this deep thinking by
modelling for students. Thus, teachers too should not only give answers; they
also need to explain answers and give examples of what is correct and incorrect.
Furthermore, when we give feedback on students’ writing, we should not only
say, “right” or “wrong.” We also need to explain why something is right or wrong
and why we give certain suggestions on students’ writing. Or, because language

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is complex, sometimes something can be correct in one situation but not correct
in another.
Students Are More Motivated

Motivation is essential for learning, but especially in English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) situations, many students may not be motivated. Group
activities give students another reason to make an effort to learn, because they
are not only learning for themselves, they are also learning for their
groupmates. Students are motivated because their group needs them. Thus,
everyone is important. If someone misses class – perhaps they are ill – their
groupmates are a support system. If someone is having trouble completing an
assignment or preparing for a test, their groupmates are there to help them.
Students are not alone. Being part of a group links with the next advantage of
groups.
Students Enjoy Learning More

Many students have fun in school – on the playground, in the canteen, on
the way to and from school – but not many students have much fun in class.
Why? One reason is that the rules in most classrooms are:
1. Eyes on your own paper.
2. No talking to your neighbour.
3. Any peer interaction is off-task: bad behaviour.
Those rules are not fun. Because humans are social animals, we often enjoy
being and doing with others. We also enjoy learning from and supporting each
other in the learning process. Fortunately, the rules in a CL classroom are
different:
1. Check your partners’ papers, so that you all can learn from each other.
2. Talk to your neighbor, so that you can understand better.
3. Listen to your peers, so that you can learn more.
Reflective Break
Review the 5 advantages discussed above. Explain in what ways these
advantages can help promote language learning in your specific teaching context.

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Students Feel Less Anxiety

In addition to making learning more enjoyable, group activities can also
reduce the anxiety students feel, especially when they have to speak in a second
language. Students feel less anxiety because when they speak in a group, they
only speak to their one, two, or three partners, not to the entire class and the
teacher. Also, if after discussing in their group, students are asked to report to
the entire class and the teacher, students are not alone. They are representing
their group, and their group has helped them prepare their response. Moreover,
students can do a group, instead of an individual, presentation. This can further
alleviate their feeling of anxiety.
Students Become More Independent

The support that groups provide also enables students to be less dependent
on their teachers. Many students ask for the teacher’s help whenever they are
not sure. However, students will not have their teachers with them when they
use English outside of school. Therefore, students need to learn to rely on
themselves. The group provides an alternative support network, so that
students can become more independent. Yes, teachers are still available, but
students should first rely on their groupmates, and their groupmates will rely on
them.
Students Learn More

Because of the above seven advantages of group activities, it is no surprise
that students can learn more when they study in groups. Let us remember those
seven advantages of group activities and see how they promote learning.
1. Students are more active – learning is an active process; teachers cannot
pour knowledge into students’ head. Instead, students actively construct
their own learning, with the help of teachers and peers. Groups enable
students to be much more active.
2. Students receive more help – learning a new language is difficult. If only one
person – the teacher – is there to help students, they will not receive enough
help. Fortunately, in groups, students also receive learning assistance from

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their groupmates.
3. Students think more deeply – to learn, memorizing is not enough. New
knowledge needs to go to students’ long term memories. Information goes
to the long term memory via repeated use and elaboration. Elaboration is
another word for deep thinking, such as explaining, giving examples, and
providing feedback.
4. Students are more motivated – motivation is the energy that powers
learning, and groups provide the energy of all the group members to push
everyone to learn.
5. Students enjoy learning more – learning can be hard work, but hard work can
be fun, especially when students have other people to share the work with
them.
6. Students feel less anxiety – group members are there to reduce the stress of
learning. Stress can block learning, but social support can lower stress and let
learning in.
7. Students become more independent – a key goal of education is to enable
students to become lifelong, self-directed learners. By moving students away
from over-dependence on teachers, groups facilitate that goal.
Reflective Break
This chapter has presented 8 advantages of including CL activities in the L2
classroom.
1. Are you now convinced that CL is beneficial for promoting language learning?
2. Can you add another two or three benefits of CL in your specific context of
teaching?
3. What do you see are the challenges of implementing CL in your teaching? Can
you list 3 of these?

Principles guide our teaching. From one principle, we can develop many
actions. For example, a fundamental principle of second language acquisition is
that input (what students hear, read, and view) should be understandable by
students, or students will not learn. Based on this principle, teachers take many
actions to increase the comprehensibility of the input students receive. For
example, teachers pre-teach vocabulary before students hear a listening
passage, and teachers help students choose reading materials that do not have
too many new terms or concepts.
Similarly, CL has principles that guide teachers’ actions in facilitating students
to learn with their fellow students. Different books on cooperative learning
sometimes suggest slightly different principles. The eight principles used in this
book are:
1. Maximum peer interactions
2. Equal opportunity to participate
3. Individual accountability
4. Positive interdependence
5. Group autonomy
6. Heterogeneous grouping
7. Teaching of cooperative skills
8. Cooperation as a value.

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This chapter explains each of these eight principles, and they will also be
referred to in other chapters later in this book. For instance, chapter 4, on Eight
Techniques for Organizing Student-Student Interaction, will discuss how the
principles are brought to life by the cooperative learning techniques.
Maximum Peer Interactions

First, let us look at the three words in this principle, starting with peer. Peers
are people with the same status. Thus, two teachers are peers with each other,
but not peers with the principal of a school, and two students in the same level
are peers, but a university student and an elementary school student are not
peers. Interactions are communication between two or more people. Usually,
interactions are in speaking or writing, but they can also be via visuals and
gestures.
The word Maximum in the principle has two meanings: maximum quantity of
peer interactions and maximum quality of peer interactions. Maximum quantity
means many peer interactions taking place at the same time. For example, in a
class of 50 students, if students are in groups of ten, there are only five peer
interactions taking place, but if students learn in groups of four, there are 12
interactions taking place. Thus, smaller groups maximize the quantity of peer
interactions.
Also, if after students have discussed with their partner(s), students then
change partners and discuss again, many peer interactions continue to take
place. In contrast, after students have discussed with their partner(s), one
student reports their discussion to the teacher and the rest of the class, only
one peer interaction takes place: the interaction between that one student and
the other students in the class. To sum up, to see how many peer interactions
are taking place, we look around the classroom and count the number of
groups. For instance, if there are 13 groups, we hope that 13 peer interactions
are taking place.
In addition to the quantity meaning of maximum peer interactions, the
second meaning of maximum refers to the quality of the peer interactions.
Quality links to advantage #3 of cooperative learning in the previous chapter of
this book: students think more deeply. This is the magic of cooperative learning,

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when students learn by interacting with peers. In addition to explaining to each

other, students also practice a range of language functions (e.g., disagreeing
politely, complimenting and clarifying) as they interact with each other. More
examples of these functions will be explained in principle #7, teaching
cooperative skills.
Equal Opportunity to Participate

The first advantage listed under Advantages of Students Learning Together is
that students are more active. To enjoy this advantage, everyone in every group
needs opportunities to take part in the groups’ activities. No one should be
excluded from these activities. In other words, everyone should have an equal
opportunity to participate.
This principle can be promoted in many ways. One way is for students to take
turns to speak. If students are asked to discuss something or to decide on an
answer, maybe one of two group members will do all or most of the talking.
However, if the instructions are to take turns to speak or to write, students are
more likely to have equal opportunities to share their thinking. Another way to
implement this principle is for each student to write in a different colour. For
instance, in a group of four, one student can write in black, another in blue,
another in green and the fourth member can use a pencil. In the end, the paper
the group wrote on should have a fairly equal distribution of colours.
The principle of equal opportunity to participate does not mean that
everyone speaks for exactly the same amount of time. For example, some group
members tend to be introverts who prefer to listen more than they speak. Also,
some group members may have more to say on some topics. For instance, if the
group is doing a project on vegetarian food, students who are vegetarians will
probably speak more, at least at the beginning of the discussion. Similarly, if the
group is working on pronunciation, those who know more about pronunciation
will talk more so as to help their groupmates understand and to help them learn
to make the necessary sounds. Later, the other members need to take turns to
develop their own competence. A key concept in CL is that the group has not
finished their work until everyone can demonstrate competence in the content
of the lesson the class is studying.

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Individual Accountability
At the same time as the principle of equal opportunity to participate
encourages all group members to have chances to take part in their group
activities, another principle – individual accountability – attempts to create an
environment in which all group members will feel friendly pressure to use those
chances and really take part in their group. Thus, individual accountability is the
partner of equal opportunity to participate.
Not surprisingly, the same strategies that promote equal opportunity to
participate also promote individual accountability. For instance, asking all group
members to take turns means that it is more difficult for someone to hide and to
try to have the other group members do all the thinking, talking, working, and
learning. In the same way, if everyone writes in a different colour ink, the
teacher and groupmates can easily see if one group member did not contribute
much to the group’s work. Another way to promote individual accountability
among group members is for everyone to be assessed individually. Students can
study together but be assessed alone, for example, via an individual quiz or task.
This encourages everyone to participate actively in the group, in order to
prepare themselves for the individual assessment that will follow.
Individual accountability puts pressure on students to do their fair share in
the group, but everyone’s fair share may not be the same. At least at the
beginning of an activity, students who are less proficient in English may have less
to share. Instead, it may be best for them to listen and watch while their more
proficient groupmates do the talking and explaining. Nevertheless, less
proficient student have a responsibility to ask questions, to let others know the
points on which they are not sure, and to later demonstrate their emerging
competence. If they are not yet confident in using the L2, they can use their L1
or a mixture of both languages. The next cooperative learning principle –
positive interdependence – encourages the more proficient group members to
support their struggling partners.

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Positive Interdependence
The cooperative learning principle of individual accountability puts pressure
on students to do their fair share in their groups. To balance that pressure, the
principle of positive interdependence offers support to group members. Positive
interdependence is the feeling among group members that they sink or swim
together. In other words, students believe that what is good for one group
member is good for the others, and what hurts one group member hurts the
others as well. The goal is for groupmates to believe in the slogan of the Three
Musketeers: “All for one and one for all.”
Positive interdependence is illustrated by a story about a group of
elementary school children in a traditional society. One day, a Western
researcher visited the children’s school. After classes had finished for the day,
the researcher placed a large basket of fruit under a tree about 50 meters from
where the children were playing. The researcher announced to the children that
whoever ran and reached the basket first could have all the fruit. However,
instead of racing individually to see who would be the winner and have the
basket for themself alone, the children ran happily together to the basket and
shared the fruit among themselves. When the surprised researcher asked the
children to explain their “strange” behaviour, the children replied, “How can one
of us be happy when the rest of us are sad.”
In keeping with the feeling of positive interdependence, the group’s goal is
the individual success of each group member. For instance, if the group’s task is
to write a composition, and the group writes an excellent composition, the
group still has not achieved their goal. The group has achieved its goal only
when each individual member has improved their writing skill so that each can
write an excellent composition. Therefore, the group members need to help
each other in order to reach their individual goals. This links with advantage #4
in chapter 1: motivation can increase learning, because students’ goal is not
only their own learning; they also need to ensure all group members learn.

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Reflective Break
Review the 4 CL principles above and make sure you understand what they
mean.
a. Give one or two examples of a speaking task that can promote positive
interdependence.
b. Give one of two examples of a reading task that can promote maximum group
interactions.
Group Autonomy
The cooperative learning principle of group autonomy links with advantage
#7 from chapter 1: students can become more independent, instead of always
relying on the teacher. One way that teachers promote this principle is via the
slogan, “Team Then Teacher.” When students ask the teacher a question or want
the teacher to check their work, the teacher’s first response is to ask, “Have you
asked your groupmates?” Only when the groupmates are unable to help will the
teacher assist.
To take the Team Then Teacher slogan one step further, another slogan can
be used, “3 + 1 B4 T.” The “3” stands for a student’s three groupmates. Students
should first ask them. The “+1” stands for one other group that the student
should ask for help. The student asks this other group B4 (equals “before”)
asking T (the teacher). The idea here is to spread the positive interdependence
beyond the small groups to the entire class.
One obstacle to promoting the principle of group autonomy flows from the
fact that students often do not trust their classmates to be able to help them.
One way to address this obstacle is to use tasks that are not too difficult. Yes,
tasks should provide some challenge, but not too much challenge. Students will
very likely give up or go running to the teacher for assistance if the task is too
demanding. Thus, as stated in the first paragraph of this chapter, teachers need
to monitor the difficulty level of materials and tasks, and if the difficulty level
might be too high, changes need to be made. Another way of helping students is
explained in the next cooperative learning principle.

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Heterogeneous Grouping
Heterogeneous grouping means forming groups that are mixed in ways that
reflect the mixture of students in the class. Students can differ in many ways,
including:
1. English proficiency
2. Motivation to learn
3. Gender
4. Religion
5. Ethnic group
6. Social class
7. Personality, such as extrovert or introverts
8. Learning readiness, for example, whether students have mental or physical
learning challenges.
There are at least four ways to form groups for cooperative learning:
1. Students form groups with whoever is already seated near them in the
classroom.
2. Students decide who will be their partners.
3. A random method of group selection is used, such as in a class of 48, to form
random groups of four, the class counts to 12, and all the four #1s form a
group, and then the four #2s, etc.
4. The teacher selects the groups.
Letting students select the group members will often be popular among
students, but the groups are likely to be homogenous, because “Birds of a
feather flock together.” In other words, similar students will join together in the
groups. For example, one of the authors of this book was in a Singapore
secondary school class when the teacher asked the students to form groups of
four. In this particular class, all the students were either Chinese or Malay,
except for one Indian student. After the students had selected their groupmates,
the result was very homogeneous: groups of Malay girls, groups of Chinese girls,
groups of Malay boys, groups of Chinese boys, with the only ethnically mixed
group being the group with the one Indian student in it.

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Students and the broader society benefit from heterogeneous groups in

several ways.
1. Peer teaching helps both the students who teach, as well as the students
who learn. Thus, students benefit from being in groups that are
heterogeneous in terms of past achievement and language proficiency.
2. Interacting with people different from themselves gives students
opportunities to learn different perspectives and form bonds with people of
varied backgrounds.
3. Initially, students may feel uncomfortable learning with peers from different
backgrounds. Stepping outside their comfort zones and overcoming this
discomfort prepares students to live in our heterogeneous, globalized world.
4. Too often in classrooms, teachers are the only ones who know everyone’s
name, because students only mix with a small percentage of their
classmates. Heterogeneous grouping provides opportunities for students to
meet more of their classmates. As a result, the classroom environment
improves.
5. Many years ago, at an education conference in Singapore, a participant from
Malaysia reported some research from her country in which high achievers
did better in homogeneous groups with other higher achievers compared to
when they were in heterogeneous groups with lower achievers. In response,
another conference participant raised the point that how we teach affects
the kind of society we create. Putting all the higher achievers together sends
a message that in life, people who do well can neglect those who are having
difficulty. In contrast, heterogeneous grouping sends the message that
everyone should look out for everyone else. In other words, the CL principle
of heterogeneous grouping fits with the CL principle of positive
interdependence.
Reflective Break
a. Would heterogeneous grouping work in your teaching context? If so, how
would you group your students? By different gender, different ability levels,
different ethnicity, etc.?
b. How about homogeneous grouping? Would this work in your teaching context
too?

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Teaching of Cooperative Skills

Cooperative skills are the skills people use to interact happily and effectively
with other people. These skills are also known as social skills, relationship skills,
leadership skills, people skills and communication skills. One such skill is
thanking others. Examples of using this skill are saying “Thanks” or “I appreciate
it” or “Thanks a lot for explaining ______ to me”. Thanking others might seem to
be a simple skill, and it is, but so many people do not use this skill. As a result,
people who helped them, feel hurt and decide not to help them again. Thus,
group efficiency declines.
Educators have developed long lists of cooperative skills and programs for
teaching those skills. Do teachers really need to teach these skills? Yes.
Sometimes, EFL students may not know the English necessary for using the skill.
For instance, they may not know the phrases to use for the cooperative skill of
disagreeing politely, such as, “Thank you for giving your opinion, but my opinion
is slightly different.” Other times, students have the necessary vocabulary, but
students do not have the attitudes necessary to use the skills. For instance, even
very low proficiency students know “Thank you,” but will they say it? One time,
one of this book’s authors was in a class of 15 year old students at a Singapore
school. At the end of a CL activity, the teacher asked the class to thank their
partner. Sadly, less than half the class performed that simple act.
Teaching cooperative skills requires time, but it is time well spent because
when EFL students learn cooperative skills, two goals are achieved. First,
students’ groups become more effective. Second, students learn important
language functions, which improve their ability to communicate in English, with
groupmates or anyone else. Thus, when students do CL, they are not only doing
a particular language assignment, such as a writing task, they are also enhancing
their communication skills.
The people at the Cooperative Learning Institute developed a six-step
procedure for teaching cooperative skills. This procedure is used with one skill at
a time. Here, the cooperative skill of thanking others will be used to illustrate
the procedure.
1. Students understand why a skill is important. This can be done by teachers
and students sharing their own experiences when the skill was or was not

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used. For instance, how do students feel when they are or are not thanked?
Are they more likely to help someone who has thanked them before?
Another way to help students understand the importance of a cooperative
skill is for the teacher to create experiences in the class in which students
observe for themselves how it feels when the skill is or is not used.
2. Students learn how to use the skill. Using a skill includes both the words that
are used as well as the gestures and other body language. Words that can be
used to thank someone include, “Thank you very much.” Body language
includes smiling and bowing one’s head slightly.
3. Students practice the skill outside of class content. This means that students
do an activity, such as a role play, for which the only focus is practicing the
cooperative skill. For instance, students could do a role play in which they are
friends going to buy some food together. They take turns to help each other
and to thank each other for the help.
4. Students use the skill as part of regular class activities. As students do a
standard class activity in their groups, such as an activity in their textbook,
they use the cooperative skill. For example, they thank each other for loaning
a pen to someone whose pen stopped working or for praising a partner for
something they did well.
5. Students discuss how well they are using the skill. While students work
together, they and their teacher can monitor their use of the skill. One way
for students to monitor is for each student to be assigned to record each
time their partner uses the skill or to write the words the partner uses when
they used the skill. Also, groups can discuss how well they are using the skill
and what they might do to maintain their use of the skill or to use it even
better.
6. Students work on the same skill for a sustained period of time. At first,
students may use a skill in a mechanical, unnatural way. It requires time for
the use of a skill to become automatic. Thus, the class should work on the
same skill for a week or more, so that it becomes natural.

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Reflective Break
Which of the following cooperative skills do your students need most in order
for them to be able to benefit from each other when learning in groups?
• Disagreeing politely
• Appreciating groupmates’ opinions
• Thanking others
• Interrupting politely
Cooperation as a Value
One of the CL principles discussed earlier is positive interdependence. This
principle seeks to build bonds among group members, just like the bond among
the children who shared the basket of fruit, instead of competing with each
other to see which one person would have the basket entirely to themself. The
principle of cooperation as a value strives to extend this ‘One for all, all for one’
beyond the small group of two, three, or four members. The goal is for students
to see themselves as cooperating with all their classmates, all their schoolmates,
all the people in their town or city or country, all the people in the world, and
even with the other species with whom humans share the earth.
Cooperation as a value links with intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is a
force from inside people that pushes them to take action. In contrast, extrinsic
motivation is a force from outside people that moves them to action.
Cooperation as a value gives students a purpose for learning beyond grades,
career, and other extrinsic motivators. Instead, students’ purposes for learning
come from desires to become more competent in language and other areas in
order to make the world a better place. For instance, students can use their
ability in English to communicate about ways to overcome environmental
problems where they live as well as globally.
The previous eight CL principles presented in this chapter can be found in
many books and articles on CL (e.g., Baloche, 1998; Johnson, Johnson, &
Holubec, 2013), although sometimes with different names. The principle of
cooperation as a value does not usually appear in other discussions of CL,

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although it may be present but not explicitly stated. The authors of this book
have included this principle because we see an overall lack of cooperation in the
world. This lack of cooperation can be seen in matters as large as wars and
discrimination or in small matters such as teachers who do not share their
materials with colleagues or students who do not thank a groupmate. Perhaps,
when students successfully cooperate in the small CL groups they will want to
adopt cooperation as a value in other areas of their life as well.

All teachers need classroom management skills, especially with large classes
of students and when students may not be very motivated to learn. A metaphor
for classroom management skills can be a toolbox, with each skill being a tool in
that toolbox. This chapter describes special CL tools for teachers to have in their
tool boxes. The eight tools described are:
1. Forming groups
2. Teambuilding
3. Changing groups
4. Arranging the seating
5. Using an attention signal
6. Teaching students different size voices
7. Considering what teachers do when students are in groups
8. Giving instructions.
Forming Groups
As discussed under the CL principle of heterogeneous grouping, usually
students should be in mixed groups. Teacher selected groups are the best way to
form heterogeneous groups. First, teachers need to decide which variables to
use when forming these groups. Most often, the number one variable is
students’ current level of English proficiency. Thus, teachers make a list of all the

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students from top to bottom based on English proficiency. If teachers do not

know their students yet, groups can be formed a week or two later, after
teachers have some data on students’ proficiency, or perhaps grades from
previous teachers can be used.
Next, teachers can choose one or more other variables on which to mix
students. For instance, some teachers find that classroom discipline improves
when groups combine boys and girls. In that case, to form groups of four
students, teachers can choose the most proficient student, the least proficient
student, and two students from the middle of the proficiency list. However, if all
of those are boys, the teacher can select two girls, one from near the top, or
one from near the bottom or one from the middle. In that way, groups will be
heterogeneous as to proficiency and gender.
What if in a class of 48, there are 32 boys and 16 girls? Should seven groups
have two boys and two girls (28 students), and five groups have three boys and
one girl (20 students)? That one girl might feel uncomfortable. An alternative is
to form 10 groups of two boys and two girls (40 students) and then two groups
of all boys (eight students). In general, teachers need to use their judgement
with the combinations, rather than blindly following any rules in books for
teachers, such as the one you are reading now.
Teambuilding
Students may feel uncomfortable and complain about being placed in
teacher selected heterogeneous groups. In response, teachers can explain that
(1) groups will change during the year or term; (2) students will change partners
during some group activities; (3) mixing with different people has many
advantages, as is explained in the section of Chapter Two under heterogeneous
grouping. Teambuilding activities offer another tool teachers can use to
overcome students’ initial discomfort with new groupmates. Below are three
teambuilding activities that can be done in groups of four.
Introducing My New Partner
Groups of four divide into pairs. The class develops a set of interview
questions, for example:
1. What name do you like to be called?
2. What is your favourite fruit?

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3. What do you like to read, in any language?

4. Who is one of your favourite family members? Why do you like this person?
5. Free question: the interviewer can ask any question.
Students interview their one partner and write the answers. Next, students
tell the other pair in their group of four about their partner. The other pair take
turns to ask questions. Via this game, students start to know about their new
groupmates.
Same Game
A group of four divides into groups of two. Each person works alone to write
six things, such as food, songs, places, people, shows, social media or games,
that they like. Then, in their group of two, students try to find two things that
they both like. These things can be on their lists of six things they like, but the
two things do not have to be on either person’s list. Finally, the two groups
come together and find one thing that all four of them like. The idea of the
game is for students to see that even though they might feel very different from
their new groupmates, actually they do have at least one thing in common.
A Surprising Fact about Me

Students think of something surprising about themselves that other people
might not know. For example, they might have an interesting hobby, or someone
in their family might have an interesting job or talent, or the student might have
had an interesting experience, such as teaching younger children or doing
volunteer work in a library or hospital. Each student takes a turn to share their
surprising fact, and the other group members each have a turn to ask a question
or make a comment. The teacher can be a model, both for telling a surprising
fact and for how to ask questions and make comments.
Reflective Break
Teambuilding activities can help students bond with their groupmates which
can make them work optimally together in their groups. The section above
discusses three teambuilding activities: Introducing my new partner, Same game
and A surprising fact about me. Can you think of two or three other teambuilding
activities that work well in your teaching contexts?

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Changing Groups
Once groups are formed, the question arises as to how long students should
be in the same group. Different experts give different guidance (Sharan &
Sharan, 1992). Some suggest about five weeks; others suggest 10 weeks, etc.
One reason for keeping groups together is that forming new groups takes time,
and it also takes time for students to become comfortable with their new
partners. On the other hand, forming new groups allows students to come to
know more of their classmates and to develop their skill at interacting with new
people.
Also, as we will see in Chapter Four, which explains eight CL techniques, in
some of these techniques, students have opportunities to interact with people
from other groups. For instance, in Everyone Can Explain Mobile, one student
temporarily leaves each group, reports to another group about their home
group’s ideas, and takes feedback from the members of the group they are
visiting. Therefore, even while students return to their home group, they have
opportunities to mix with classmates from other groups.
Before groups disband, it might be useful to have some kind of farewell. Here
are two related ideas for the farewell. Groupmates can write “reference letters”
for each other. These letters list their partners’ strong points as group members.
Something similar is for each student to take a piece of paper and write their
name at the top. Each student passes their paper to the left. Students see
whose name is at the top of the paper, and at the bottom of the paper, they
write about something the person did to be a good groupmate. Then, they fold
over what they wrote, so that no one else can read it. The passing, writing, and
folding continue until each piece of paper has returned to the person whose
name is at the top of the paper. This person unfolds the paper and reads the
compliments they have received. This paper is similar to the reference letters,
and both can later be shown to students’ new groupmates.
Another idea about group longevity comes from the Cooperative Learning
Institute at the University of Minnesota (USA). The CL experts there talk about
“base groups.” A base group stays together for a year or more. It functions
similarly to a support group, a little like a family. Students do not do many
activities with their base groups. Instead, they talk to each other about school

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and other matters, and offer each other advice and support. Students are with
their regular group members every class, but they see the members of their
base group less often.
Arranging the Seating

How students sit in their groups has an important impact on the groups.
Several factors need to be considered.
1. Students need to sit close together so that they can easily see each other’s
work and hear each other’s voices. If a group of four arrange themselves in a
straight line, the two people at the ends will have difficulty seeing what each
is doing and hearing what each is saying.
2. No one should have their back to the teacher.
3. Teachers need space to move around the class to observe all the groups.
When each student has their own desk, sometimes the best arrangement is
for two group members to sit side-by-side, with the other twosome in their
group sitting side-by-side behind them. Many times, students will be working
alone or talking with only their one partner. When the entire group of four
needs to discuss, the pair in front will turn around. Then, when the teacher is
talking the front pair can turn back to the front in order to see and hear the
teacher. This two-by-two configuration also works well for auditorium seating.
When students are in their groups, it is useful for every group member to
have a number. To make it easy for the teacher and the students to instantly
know everyone’s number, groups should be arranged uniformly, and everyone
sitting in the same place should have the same number. For instance, the person
in the northwest seat can be #1, the person in the northeast seat #2, etc.
Of course, there is only a 25% chance of having exactly four members in
every group. For example, instead of having 48 students (12 groups of four
members) or 52 students (13 groups of four members), there may be 49, 50, or
51 members in a class. Thus, there may be one or two groups with three or five
members.

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Using an Attention Signal

When students are busy working in their groups, the teacher will need to
stop the groups and get the students’ attention for various reasons, such as:
1. Perhaps the instructions were not clear or students have misunderstood one
of the teaching points
2. More happily, perhaps the teacher heard one group do something especially
well and wants to share this with the entire class
3. Maybe it is time to move to another step in an activity or to end an activity.
Many possible attention signals exist. For instance, some teachers have bells
or whistles. Some teachers have loud voices. A common attention signal is for
teachers to clap and students to respond to that clap. For instance, teachers can
clap five times, and then, students can clap twice in response. Two advantages
of students also clapping are that teachers have only two hands, but a class of
students have many more hands and, thus, can make a louder sound. Also, as it
is difficult for students to clap with anything in their hands, clapping encourages
students to put down their pencil, pen, etc.
When introducing an attention signal, the teacher may want to explain that
an attention signal is being used to save time for the class. If one minute is
needed to gain students’ attention, and this happens ten times in a class
session, ten minutes are lost. However, if students can focus on the teacher
after only five seconds, a great deal of time is saved. Our experience is that
attention signals no longer work well after two or three weeks. Thus, the
attention signal needs to be changed and/or students need to be reminded of
its importance. Another tactic we have used is to use a two-part attention signal,
e.g., the teacher claps, students clap, teacher does a gesture (such as a victory
sign), and students copy the gesture. Also, when students lead the class, they
should also use an attention signal.

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Teaching Students Different Size Voices

Noise level is a frequent concern of teachers who use CL or who are thinking
of using CL. One way to address this concern is to introduce students to the
concept of two size voices. One size is a group size voice that can only be heard
within a single group of four. (Please remember the point earlier in this chapter
in the section about arranging groups regarding students sitting close together
so that they can hear each other easily.) The other size voice is a class size voice.
Students use this louder voice when they address the entire class on behalf of
their group.
Too often, students’ group size voice is too loud, and their class size voice is
too soft. This is one more reason, along with the CL principle of maximum peer
interactions, to minimize the number of times when one student addresses the
entire class. Many teachers and students feel a need for whole class reporting,
in other words, for students to tell their answers to the entire class, because the
teacher can check the answers, and students can receive the teacher’s approval.
However, especially in large classes, it is not practical to call on one person from
each group. Instead, students can share answers with another group, either the
other pair in their foursome or with a nearby group. Yet another is for the
teacher to share one group’s good ideas with the entire class. After all, the
teacher usually speaks more loudly and clearly.
Reflective Break
In addition to teaching students to control their voice level, what else can you
do to keep the voice level down during group discussions?
Considering What Teachers Do When

Students Are in Groups
For many teachers, one of the biggest challenges of CL involves the teacher
not talking. Many teachers feel it is their job to talk, and when teachers do not
talk, they are not doing their job. Additionally, it can be boring to not talk, to just

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listen. Fortunately, teachers have many interesting activities to do while

students are working together in their groups. Teachers will have no worries
about being bored.
The key activity for teachers while students are doing cooperative learning is
to be a “guide on the side.” This contrasts with the usual teacher role of being a
“sage on the stage,” always talking to students. Being a guide on the side
involves observing in such areas as:
1. Are students understanding what is being taught?
2. Are groups functioning well?
a. Does there seem to be maximum peer interactions in terms of quality,
that is, are students teaching and learning from each other? Are they
using cooperative skills?
b. Are the groups functioning well together? Does everyone seem to have
an equal opportunity to participate? Is everyone doing their fair share
(individual accountability)?
c. Do students seem to feel positively interdependent? Are they helping
each other to learn?
3. Are students doing or saying anything that teachers can learn from to share
with the rest of the class? Sometimes, students have fresh ideas and
examples for teaching important learning points.
Remembering the CL principle of group autonomy, teachers need to resist
the temptation to intervene immediately when a group has problems.
Sometimes, the best policy can be to let students try to figure things out for
themselves. If the teacher does intervene, maybe asking a question can be the
best approach. Sometimes, questions can be the best way to help students find
their own answers. For instance, if students are having difficulty figuring out the
correct form of a word, such as noun or verb, the teacher can ask them to check
in a dictionary, either hard copy or electronic. Then, the teacher can notice how
students use the dictionary and guide them if they have trouble with that tool.

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Giving Instructions
Many times, students encounter difficulties with the various steps they need
to perform when they do CL. Some teacher preparation can help. Preparation
ideas include the following:
1. Expect some initial problems the first time students do a new technique.
Thus, it may be best to let students do the technique with very easy content
the first time, so that they become familiar with the technique.
2. Use the same CL technique multiple times. After a little while, as soon as
they hear the name of the technique, they know what to do.
3. Allow flexibility in how students work together. Maybe the students’ way is as
good as or even better than what the teacher had planned. Plus, giving
students more control may increase their feeling of ownership.
4. Write instructions on the board, the screen, etc.
5. Give the instructions one step at a time, instead of asking students to
remember many steps.
6. Ask one student per group or one per class to repeat the instructions before
the class begins an activity.

Many CL techniques exist, and each technique has many possible variations
(Jacobs, Power, & Loh, 2002). Teachers and students can create their own CL
techniques and variations. This chapter presents eight CL techniques that the
authors have found useful, along with some CL principles connected to the
techniques. All of these techniques are generic, which means they can be used
with any content and by any age of students. Also, most of the techniques work
with groups of two or four students, and even with groups of three. The eight
techniques are:
1. Circle of Speakers
2. 4S
3. Circle of Writers
4. Write-Pair-Square
5. Everyone Can Explain
6. Exchange A Question
7. Jigsaw
8. Role Play
Circle of Speakers
Circle of Speakers is a simple CL technique, which makes it a good one to use
with a class unfamiliar with CL. The steps are:

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1. Students are in groups of two, three, or four. Each has a number.

2. Each person takes a turn to speak, going around in a circle. They can each
speak many times.
3. Later, a number is called, and the person with that number may be asked to
share their partner(s)’ ideas or their group’s discussion with others. The
others can be another group or the rest of the class.
Circle of Speakers encourages equal opportunity to participate and individual
accountability, because each group member takes a turn to give an idea or a
piece of information. In addition to speaking, students are also listening because
later, the teacher will call a number and students with that number will be asked
to share their group’s ideas with others. A simple example of Circle of Speakers
can be for two students to take turns to do the items in an exercise in their
textbook. While member #1 does item #1, member #2 checks #1’s answers and
asks for explanations. If #2 has a different answer, #2 can present their
alternative. Please notice that maximum peer interactions (quality) are
encouraged, as students explain their answers and also sometimes offer
alternative answers. Furthermore, students’ feedback to their partners can
include such cooperative skills as praising others.
4S
4S stands for Stand, Stir, Stop, Speak. It is a good technique for giving
students a chance to stand up, rather than sitting for an entire class. The steps in
4S are:
1. Everyone stands and pushes in their chair so as to provide space for walking
around the room.
2. Students stir by walking around the class alone, not with their groupmates.
3. The teacher says, “Stop,” and everyone stops walking and form a pair with
whoever is standing nearest to them.
4. Students speak to their new partner. They take turns as in Circle of Speakers.
5. Students may stir again, and the next time they stop and speak, they tell
their new partner about their discussion with their previous partner.

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Many students enjoy 4S, because it gives them a chance to stand up, instead
of always sitting. Also, 4S allows students to interact with other classmates. As
students may be meeting new classmates, it might be useful for them to start by
introducing themselves before they begin their conversations. When students
return to the home group, they can report on what they discussed.
Circle of Writers
Circle of Writers is similar to Circle of Speakers, except that students take
turns to write, instead of taking turns to speak. There are two version of Circle of
Writers. The first version is Circle of Writers (One at a Time). The steps are:
1. Students are in groups of two, three, or four. Each student has a number, and
each group has only one piece of paper.
2. Each person takes a turn to write and then pass the paper around in a circle
to the next person in the group. The paper can go around multiple times.
3. Later, a number is called, and the person with that number may be asked to
share their partner(s)’ ideas or their group’s ideas with others. The others
can be another group or the rest of the class.
The other version of Circle of Writers is Circle of Writers (All at Once). The
difference is that in Circle of Writers (All at Once) each group member has their
own piece of paper, so that they can all write at the same time, but they still
pass the paper around the group, so that everyone can add to what their
partners have written. In this way, everyone writes on every piece of paper.
Circle of Writers (One at a Time) works well for short tasks in which students
write for less than a minute, and Circle of Writers (All at Once) works better
when students write for a longer period of time.
As noted earlier, CL techniques have many variations. Also, techniques can be
combined. An example is Write-Circle of Speakers. Here, students write alone
first before taking turns to speak. The Write step gives students time to gather
ideas that they will later share when they do Circle of Speakers. Similarly, a Think
step can be used instead of the Write step to create Think-Circle of Speakers.
The Think step, like the Write step, gives students time to prepare. Adding a
Write or a Think step to Circle of Speakers may facilitate the CL principle of equal

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opportunity to participate by allowing more reflective students time to gather

ideas, so that they have more to share. Also, for teachers worried about the
noise level, writing and thinking should be quieter than speaking.
Write-Pair-Square
Promoting the CL principle of maximum peer interactions (quantity) means
moving away from whole class reporting, in which one student speaks to the
entire class at the end of a CL activity. Fortunately, many CL techniques provide
alternatives to whole class reporting. Write-Pair-Square is one of them. The
steps are:
1. Students are in groups of four. Each has a piece of paper or an electronic
device, such as a tablet computer.
2. Each student works alone to write their ideas.
3. Students pair and discuss what they wrote with a partner.
4. The group of four comes together (a square has four sides), and each student
takes a turn to tell the other pair about their partner’s ideas.
A variation on Write-Pair-Square is Write-Pair-Switch. “Switch” means to
switch partners. The difference is in the final step.
1. Students are in groups of four. Each has a piece of paper or an electronic
device, such as a tablet computer.
2. Each student works alone to write their ideas.
3. Students pair and discuss what they wrote with a partner: #1 and #2 discuss,
and #3 and #4 discuss.
4. Student switch partners. For instance, #1 partners #3, and #2 partners #4.
Each student takes a turn to tell their new partner about their discussion
with their previous partner.

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Everyone Can Explain

CL can be used with rote learning tasks, such as remembering how to form
the past tense of irregular verbs, such as go-went and know-knew, but the real
power of CL can best be seen with tasks that involve complex thinking. Some CL
techniques are especially designed to promote that kind of complex thinking.
Everyone Can Explain is one of them. The steps are:
1. Students are in groups of two, three, or four.
2. The teacher does some teaching to prepare students for the group activity.
3. The teacher gives the class a task.
4. Groups cooperate to respond.
5. The group checks that everyone can give and explain their group’s response.
6. The teacher calls a number at random, and the person with that number
gives and explains their group’s response.
Everyone Can Explain particularly promotes the CL principle of positive
interdependence, as the group sinks or swims together. When students do the
technique in groups of four, and the teacher calls #4 to give and explain their
group’s answer, if #4 does a good job, the teacher does not praise #4. Instead,
the teacher praises #s 1, 2, and 3 for preparing #4 to give and explain their
group’s response. Conversely, if #4 does not do well, the teacher criticizes #s 1,
2, and 3 for not properly preparing #4.
CL is more than asking students to sit in groups. Step 6 of Everyone Can
Explain illustrates one of the elements that makes CL special. In traditional group
activities, the teacher calls a group, and the top student in the group typically
answers for the group. This practice diminishes the individual accountability,
because the other group members know they do not need to be ready to give
and explain their group’s answer; if the teacher calls their group, the star of the
group will answer. Also, equal opportunity to participate is diminished, because
the star participates more than the others.
Everyone Can Explain Mobile is a variation of Everyone Can Explain which
promotes the CL principle of maximum peer interactions (quantity). Instead of
the teachers calling a number and then selecting which person with that

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number will give and explain their group’s response, all the students in the class
with that number will stand and move to another group. To simplify this
movement, the teacher might want to pair neighboring groups, and then the
two students in those two groups with the number called will change seats.
After the mobile students have presented their group’s response, the students
in the host group can give feedback. Finally, the mobile students return to their
home group and report on the feedback they received.
Exchange a Question
Many teachers find that CL can be useful for exam preparation. Exchange A
Question may be one of the best CL techniques for this. The steps are:
1. Students are in groups of two.
2. Each student writes one or two questions based on the content the class has
been studying.
3. On a separate paper, students write answers to their question(s).
4. Students exchange questions, but not answers, and answer each other’s
questions.
5. Students compare answers.
Two points should be explained about Exchange A Question. First, why do
students write answers for their own questions before exchanging questions?
This allows students to check whether their questions are clear and whether
their questions are too difficult. Second, teachers might want to suggest to
students the kinds of questions they should ask to their groupmates. Otherwise,
student may write simple questions that require only memory. Also, teachers
may wish to show students how to write the kinds of questions that often
appear on exams, because if students can write a certain type of question, they
should be better prepared to answer that type of question when it appears on
their exams.

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Jigsaw
Jigsaw is one of the best known CL techniques, and it has a meaningful
history. Jigsaw was created to encourage bonding among students of different
races. Too often the tendency is for students to stay with peers of the same
race, whether it is on the playground, in the school canteen, or outside of
school. Jigsaw attempts to use the time students spend together inside
classrooms to develop ties between the races, ties that will live outside
classrooms. Jigsaw does this bonding via three strategies: (1) students share a
common goal; (2) each student has a unique resource that the others need to
reach the goal; (3) students are encouraged by the teacher to cooperate. While
Jigsaw was especially designed to bring students together, all CL techniques help
achieve that goal.
The steps in Jigsaw are:
1. Students are in groups of (usually) four students. This is their home group.
2. Each home group member receives a different reading (piece of the Jigsaw)
on a related topic. For example, if the topic is vegetarian food, the four
different topics might be:
a. Benefits for human health of eating vegetarian food
b. Benefits for the environment of eating vegetarian food
c. Benefits to other animals, such as chickens, cows, and fishes of eating
vegetarian food.
d. Suggestions for preparing vegetarian food.
3. Students work alone to go through the reading they were given. Then,
students leave their home group and form expert groups with students who
have the same reading. These expert groups should have no more than four
members in order to promote equal opportunity to participate and individual
accountability.
4. The expert groups have two functions: (1) understand their reading piece; (2)
prepare to teach it (not read it) to their home group members.

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5. Students return to their home group, and each takes a turn to teach their
home group members.
6. The class individually take a quiz which requires knowledge of all the reading
pieces. Alternatively, the groups can do a task that requires knowledge of all
the readings. For instance, they might develop a vegetarian recipe that they
can prepare for their family and create a short talk to explain the benefits of
the recipe.
Jigsaw has many variations. Jigsaw II is the most common variation, because
it addresses one difficulty in using the original version of Jigsaw. In the original
Jigsaw, each piece needs to be understandable on its own. For example, Jigsaw
would not work with a story, because if each student in a group of four only has
one quarter of the story, how can the student with the last quarter understand
their piece if they have not read the first three quarters of the story? Jigsaw II
solves this problem by giving all the reading pieces to all the students. Students
read everything, but become experts in only one of the four pieces. After they
return from their expert groups, students teach their home group members
about the one piece in which they are experts. An especially student centred
variation on Jigsaw is Jigsaw (Bring Your Own Piece). Instead of teachers
providing all the readings, students use the internet, etc. to find materials to
read and then teach.
Students like Jigsaw because it gives them more control over their learning,
because in Step 5, students become teachers, when they teach their piece to
their home group members. Jigsaw utilizes a type of positive interdependence
called resource positive interdependence, as each student has unique
information that their groupmates do not have. Students need to share their
unique resources in order for the group to succeed. Many CL activities can be
created to tap on resource positive interdependence. For instance, students can
interview each other to find out about each other’s families or likes and then
report that information to the other pair in their foursome. Another type of
resource positive interdependence involves materials. For instance, each group
member can have a different colour pen, and the group’s task can be to create a
mind map with all four colours.

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Role Play
In addition to using resources, another way to promote positive
interdependence involves each group member having different roles. For
instance, one student can be the facilitator, who leads the group. Another
member can be the encourager, who encourages everyone to share their ideas.
A third member can be the checker, who checks that everyone understands. The
fourth member can play the role of timekeeper, who reminds the group about
how much time is left and encourages the group to stay on task.
Two important points to note about roles: one, roles should rotate, so that
everyone has a chance to learn all the roles and the vocabulary that goes with
the roles. Two, education institutions are different from other types of
organizations. In other organizations, whoever does a role the best always does
that role, because the goals lies in doing the most work as quickly and accurately
as possible. However, in education institutions, the goal is learning. Thus, the
person who is best at a particular role should not do that role. Instead, they
should teach that role to others. For example, whoever is the best writer, should
not write for the group. Instead, they should teach the others how to write.
So far, this section has talked about roles generally. Role play provides a fun
way to use roles. Students can create the situations, the roles, and the language
for their role plays. Instead of one group at a time performing their role play for
the class, groups can present to another group. That saves time, is less boring,
and promotes the CL principle of maximum peer interactions (quantity). One
way to promote maximum peer interactions (quality) is for students to give
feedback to the other groups. Teachers can work with the class to develop a
feedback questionnaire. Then, one group can present to the entire class, and
the teacher can use this presentation to demonstrate how to use the feedback
questionnaire.
Reflective Break
Review the 8 CL techniques discussed in this chapter. Pick 3 techniques that
you think would be suitable for teaching the following skills:
a. Grammar
b. Vocabulary
c. Pronunciation

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Conclusion
In conclusion, this chapter has built on the previous three chapters. Chapter
1 presented eight reasons why teachers might want to use groups activities,
while chapter 2 explained eight CL principles for enhancing the effectiveness of
group activities, and chapter 3 suggested classroom management strategies to
lay the groundwork for successful peer interactions. The current chapter,
chapter 4 recommended eight generic CL techniques for organizing the way
students interact with one another. The principles from chapter 3 were referred
to in regard to the various techniques.
The next three chapters further prepare teachers to use CL. Chapter 5
advises teachers to pay attention to the development of students’ skills at
working with peers, while chapter 6 suggests what to do when problems arise
with group activities, and chapter 7 emphasizes that CL is just one part of the
overall student centred paradigm in teaching and learning, and the chapter
highlights links between CL and other branches of the paradigm.

As stated in chapter 2, the teaching of cooperative skills constitutes a CL
principle. As explained in that chapter, many different cooperative skills
encourage successful interactions among students. Chapter 2 also explained a
six step procedure for teaching cooperative skills and suggested that only one
cooperative skill be taught at a time. The purpose of the current chapter is to
nominate eight cooperative skills that teachers might want to teach. However,
each class is different; so, the skills to teach each class may vary. Also, the
English curriculum that a particular class is doing may emphasize particular
cooperative skills.
This chapter will suggest gambits that go with each skill. A gambit is a set
phrase. For instance, a gambit for disagreeing politely is, “I’m sorry but I have a
slightly different opinion.” The eight cooperative skills highlighted in this chapter
are:
1. Thanking others
2. Praising others
3. Encouraging others to participate
4. Checking that everyone understands
5. Asking for help
6. Listening to others
7. Keeping to time limits
8. Making suggestions.

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Thanking Others
Thanking others can be a good cooperative skill to start with when beginning
to teach these skills. Firstly, there should be many opportunities to practice
thanking others Secondly, the vocabulary is easy. Gambits for thanking others
can be as simple as “Thanks” and “I appreciate it.” Thirdly, when students thank
their peers, the atmosphere in the group improves, because everyone enjoys
being thanked.
Praising Others
Everyone enjoys being thanked, and everyone enjoys being praised. Thus,
praising others is another useful cooperative skill to teach. With both thanking
and praising, once students have learned to use simple gambits for the skill, they
should go further and provide explanations. Why are they thanking someone?
What did the person do that was deserving of praise? For example, instead of
saying, “You are a good groupmate,” students can say, “You are a good
groupmate, because you help me when I have trouble,” or “You are a good
groupmate, because you try hard to improve your English.”
Encouraging Others to Participate

Some people like to talk, and they are not worried about making mistakes,
but other people need encouragement to talk in the group, especially when
they are speaking in a new language. That is why the cooperative skill of
encouraging others to participate should be taught to students. Using this skill
fits with the CL principle of equal opportunity to participate, as some students
have good ideas and just need invitations to share their ideas, or maybe they
prefer to think and observe first before contributing. Gambits to use here
include, “What do you think, ________ (the person’s name)?” and “You’re
smart, _____ (the person’s name). Please share your ideas.”

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Reflective Break
Please add more examples of useful gambits for the following CL skills:
• Thanking others for being good listeners, for giving good advice, etc.
• Praising others for their contributions, for being helpful etc.
• Encouraging others to share opinions, to contribute more
Checking That Everyone Understands

As stated earlier in this book, a key point to understand about CL is that the
goal is not what the group can do, but what each individual in the group can do.
Thus, when a group finishes its task, the group is not finished; the group has
only finished when everyone in the group can do the task on their own. This is
why the cooperative skill of checking that everyone understands deserves
attention from teachers and students.
Just asking people, “Do you understand?” seldom works, as most people will
answer, “Yes,” even if they do not understand. Instead, people should be asked
to demonstrate their understanding. Gambits for this skill include, “Can you
please explain what we talked about?” and “How would you explain this to
someone who missed class today?” and “What were the main points we studied
today?”
Asking for Help

Just as students need to check that their groupmates understand, so too do
groupmates who do not understand need to let others know that they need
help. The CL principle of positive interdependence seeks to create an
atmosphere in which everyone feels supported, in which everyone is willing to
admit what they do not know. Actually, students should not be ashamed to say,
“I don’t know,” as much about language remains outside the understanding of
language teachers and even linguists. Among the gambits students can use to
ask for help are, “Could you please say that again?” and “What does _______ (a
word or phrase) mean?” and “Could you please explain your main points again?”

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Listening to Others
A common complaint in groups is that everyone wants to talk, but no one
wants to listen. Also, many misunderstandings arise because people did not
listen carefully to each other. Listening skills are especially important in a second
language, because students have so many difficulties already with vocabulary,
grammar, background knowledge, etc. Thus, the cooperative skill of listening to
others can be very useful. Here, non-verbal language should be taught, such as
maintaining eye contact and leaning forward to show interest and nodding the
head to indicate understanding. Gambits for this skill include, “Let me check if I
understand (and then trying to repeat or paraphrase what the speaker said)”
and asking questions, such as “I like what you say. Could you please speak a little
louder and slower, so that I can understand better?”
Keeping to Time Limits

One problem with group activities arises when some groups finish before
others. Of course, just because a group says that they have finished a task does
not mean that they have really finished. However, if some groups have
successfully completed the task before others, one role for them is to help other
groups who may be having difficulty. Alternatively, students can start on the
homework including reading their books for extensive reading.
Having time limits provides another way to make it more likely that all groups
finish at approximately the same time. These time limits can be adjusted. For
instance, if two more minutes remain in a 10 minute time limit but all the
groups seem to have finished, the teacher might want to bring the activity to an
immediate close. Conversely, if after 10 minutes, all the groups seem to still be
working intensively, the teacher might want to ignore the time limit.
The cooperative skill of keeping to time limits involves two aspects: watching
the time, and encouraging the group to stay on track. At first, some students
have difficulty participating in the group and simultaneously watching the time.
Gambits for encouraging groups to focus on their task include, “Only _____
minutes left. We need to focus on our task.”

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Making Suggestions
One of the most difficult cooperative skills is to make suggestions to others,
because many people feel that suggestions are attacks, and that by making a
suggestion, the other person is attacking them. The CL principle of positive
interdependence is important for changing this feeling, because if the group has
a feeling of one for all and all for one, suggestions will be seen as helping, not
attacking. A Russian proverb states that, “An enemy will agree, but a friend will
disagree.” In other words, an enemy will not point out people’s weaknesses,
because enemies are glad to see weaknesses. In contrast, friends want people
to improve on their weak areas. Gambits for making suggestions include, “I like
your answer. Maybe to make your answer even better, we could _____” and
“Good job! Another way might be to ______.”
Conclusion
Chapter 5 has highlighted the fact that students need skills to cooperate with
others. Furthermore, these skills can be particularly difficult to mobilize in a
language that is not students’ first language. Therefore, foreign language
teachers need to make a special effort to facilitate students’ acquisition of these
skills, so that students can more effectively learn with their peers, and so that,
beyond the classroom, students will be prepared to interact in a polite and
efficient manner with whomever they may encounter.
Reflective Break
a. This chapter discussed eight cooperative skills. Do your students use those
skills in their mother tongue language(s)?
b. What about you? Do you use those eight skills and other important
cooperative skills, such as disagreeing politely, when you interact with your
students, with your colleagues, and with other people in your life?

Research and theory in education make CL sound so good, as if it is
guaranteed to perform miracles by changing unmotivated students with very
low proficiency into highly motivated students with high proficiency. Sometimes,
miracles do happen, but language learning is a long process, especially in foreign
language situations. Despite the difficulties, we should not give up; we should
collaborate with our fellow teachers to address the problems that occur during
group activities.
This book has already discussed the problem of takeovers, when one or two
group members try to do everything and do not give others equal opportunity
to participate. The problem of freeloading, i.e., members not contributing in the
group, has also been discussed. Furthermore, the eight CL techniques described
in Chapter 4 are designed to minimize these two problems.
The eight other problems with groups discussed in this chapter are:
1. Lack of desire to help groupmates

2. Arguing
3. Socializing
4. Loners/Excluded
5. Appearances
6. Ignorance
7. Coverage
8. Assessment

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Lack of Desire to Help Groupmates

CL is about students believing that they benefit from helping others.
Unfortunately, many students do not feel positively interdependent with their
classmates. This book has already presented various ways to promote positive
interdependence, including (1) the group having a common goal, (2) resources
being distributed among the group members, and (3) group members playing
different roles. Here are three more.
1. Positive reward/celebration interdependence – when the group achieves
their goal, they all receive a reward, such as bonus points, recognition by the
teacher, or the group celebrates, for example, they do a group cheer or
handshake.
2. Positive identity interdependence – just like a sports team or a country, the
group has a flag, colours, a group name, or a group logo to encourage
everyone to feel a common identity as group members.
3. External challenge positive interdependence – the group works together to
beat a standard they have previously set. For example, the group tries to
write compositions that are better than the ones they wrote the previous
time.
Arguing
Disagreement can be useful, because it pushes students to think, but when
disagreement turns to argument, students are not trying to learn; they are only
trying to win the argument. To overcome this problem, the class can do
teambuilding activities (see chapter three), increase groups’ feelings of positive
interdependence (as discussed in the previous section of the current chapter),
and work on students’ cooperative skills.
Socializing
CL promotes peer interaction, but socializing is peer interaction that does not
connect to what the class is studying. Some socializing is normal and helps

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students feel more comfortable in their groups; however, too much socializing
hinders learning. One way to reduce socializing is to use time limits and for one
group member to play the rotating role of time keeper.
Loners/Excluded
Two problems sometimes arise with individual students who have difficulty
participating in group activities. Loners prefer to do everything alone. Excluded
students are those whom no one wants in their group. In both cases, the first
strategy for teachers is to find out the root of the problem by talking to the
students themselves, their families, and their past teachers. A second strategy is
to find a few friendly, kind class members with good cooperative skills and ask
them to be these students’ partners.
Appearances
Many years ago, if a teacher was teaching using CL and a principal or a
department chair came to observe the class, afterwards, the teacher might be
criticized for being a lazy teacher who tried to have the students do their job, by
asking students to teach each other. In contrast, nowadays, most administrators,
such as principals, want teachers to regularly use CL (Jacobs & Renandya, 2016;
Pan, Nyeu, & Cheng, 2017). However, many students and parents still believe
that teaching means talking, and teachers who are not talking all the time are
bad teachers. Therefore, teachers should explain why they are using CL, and use
easy content at first, so that students can see that CL can work.
Ignorance
A major fear among teachers is that students will learn errors from their
groupmates. Teachers worry that when two students cooperate, what may
occur is 0 + 0 = -1. In other words, instead of improving their language
proficiency, students’ proficiency will become worse, as students add their
partner’s errors to their own. For instance, one student may believe that the
correct form is, “She doesn’t has a car”, while their partner uses the equally
erroneous, “She don’t have a car.” Two solutions for the concern about

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ignorance being contagious are mixing groups based on past achievement, and
striving to use tasks that are doable for students.
Coverage
Many teachers feel pressure to cover every page in the textbook and
everything in the syllabus. Teachers worry that if they stop talking for students
to work in groups, it will take time away from covering all the material that
students will need to know for exams. The flaw in that logic lies in the fact that
teachers cannot pore information into students’ heads; just because teachers
cover something does not mean students will learn it. Instead, students need to
construct their own understanding via active learning, and CL is a great form of
active learning (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1998).
Assessment
If students study together, should they all receive the same grade? Is that
fair? However, if all group members receive an individual grade, how can
teachers know how much students have contributed to their group? This is a
complicated issue, and an entire book has been written about it: Johnson, D. W.,
& Johnson, R. T. (2003). Assessing students in groups: Promoting group
responsibility and individual accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Here are some very different ideas to consider:
1. Students can study together but be assessed alone. For instance, students
can work in groups to prepare for a quiz, but then, they each take the quiz
alone and receive an individual grade.
2. Not everything students do needs to be graded. If intrinsic motivation is
strong, if tasks are linked to students’ interests, and if students want to help
their groupmates, they will be engaged in tasks, even when no grades are
used.
3. Group grades can increase students’ feeling of positive interdependence,
especially reward / celebration interdependence. This pushes students to try
their best to motivate and teach their group members.
4. Of course, these three options can be used at different times with the same
group of students.

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Conclusion
It is no surprise that group activities are not easy. In most cases, students are
unaccustomed to learning with peers, because for most of their previous school
experience, class time was spent learning alone or as an entire class. Thus,
group activities are usually difficult because change is usually difficult. However,
sometimes change is important. If we want to gain the eight advantages of
group activities, discussed in chapter 1, we need to devote time, effort, and skill
to overcome the potential problems discussed in the current chapter.
Reflective Break
The chapter discusses the following 8 potential problems:

1. Lack of desire to help groupmates
2. Arguing
3. Socializing
4. Loners/Excluded
5. Appearances
6. Ignorance
7. Coverage
8. Assessment
Choose 3 problems you are likely to encounter in your teaching context and
discuss how you would go about solving these problems.

As was highlighted in the previous chapter in the discussion of the problem
of coverage, students construct their own learning. Teachers cannot force
learning into students’ heads; teachers can only facilitate. Student centred
learning is based on this theory, known as social constructivism, that students
must actively cooperate with others, especially teachers and fellow students
(Jacobs & Renandya, 2016). CL is one student centred teaching method. This
chapter links CL with other student centred forms of instruction. These student
centred forms of instruction are:
1. Extensive reading
2. KWL
3. Thinking skills
4. Think aloud
5. Process approach to writing
6. Peer feedback
7. Student evaluation of teaching
8. Dialog journals
Extensive Reading
Extensive reading (ER) encourages students to read in large quantity with the
reading material at students’ independent reading level. This means that

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students can understand what they read with little or no outside assistance.
How does ER link with CL? After all, students mostly read alone, but CL is about
interacting with peers. Actually, some advantages come from students
cooperating on ER.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of students cooperating on ER has to do with
motivation. When students see their peers reading and enjoying what they read,
students become more motivated to read. Connected to this advantage is that
reading can be more fulfilling when students have opportunities in their CL
groups to discuss what they have read, what they like about the book and what
they learned from it. For example, students can form book clubs in which they
meet regularly to share their reading with each other, recommend good reading
materials to each other and advise each other about what they might not want
to read.
K-W-L
K-W-L, first developed by Ogle (1986), is a well-known method for helping
students understand expository texts. The steps are:
1. Each student creates a K-W-L table as shown in the next page.
2. In the first column, the K column, each student writes about what they
already know about the topic on which the class will be reading. For instance,
perhaps the class will be reading something about solar power. If students
know nothing about solar power, they can write what they know about a
broader topic, such as the sun or about electricity. In the K column, students
can also write how they learned what they know, such as maybe they saw a
YouTube video or they read something in their science textbook. The K
column helps students recall their background knowledge on a topic.
3. In the second column of the K-W-L table, the W column, students write what
they want to know about the topic. As a result, the W column enhances
students’ motivation; they are reading to answer their own questions.
4. The last column, the L column, is done after the students have finished
reading. Students use that column to record what they learned from the
reading.

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What I Know What I Want To Know What I Learned
As with most student centred techniques, K-W-L can easily be changed into a
CL technique. Instead of working alone to do each column, students can
cooperate. Students can discuss and then write; they can even interview each
other and put their partner’s answers in their partner’s K-W-L table. Another
way for students to cooperate is to add a fourth column to make K-W-L-S. The S
stands for Still Want to Know. Then, students can help each other to research
the points on which they want to know more.
Reflective Break
Find a suitable reading passage and use the K-W-L method to help your
students understand the contents. Can you incorporate a stronger CL component
at the K, W, and L stage so that students become more engaged and as a result,
understand the passage at a deeper level?
Thinking Skills
Ministries of Education and universities all over the world emphasise the
teaching of thinking skills. A simple definition of thinking is “going beyond the
information given.” For instance, if an English language textbook has a sentence,
“George likes mangoes,” a question such as, “What fruit does George like?” is
not a thinking question; it is a text retrieval question, because the answer is on
the page for students to find and retrieve. However, for questions such as, “How
can you make soup with mangoes?” or “How can you use mangoes in place of a
birthday cake?” students cannot find the answers in the textbook; they need to
go beyond the information given.
Nowadays, many exams measure thinking skills, and teachers want to see
students demonstrate those skills by “thinking outside the box.” Groups can

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help students develop and deploy their thinking skills. For example, students can
ask each other questions, such as in Exchange a Question (chapter four). Please
recall that in Exchange a Question, teachers often guide students about what
kinds of questions to ask their partners. “Why” questions often promote
thinking. Examples are:
1. Why is/are, e.g., “Why are you early today?”

2. Why do, e.g., “Why do you like mangoes?”
3. Why was/were, e.g., “Why were you smiling?”
4. Why did, e.g., “Why did she help her sister?”
5. Why will, e.g., “Why will you improve your English?”
6. Why might, e.g., “Why might you be happy tomorrow?”
7. Why should, e.g., “Why should I worry about other students’ problems?”
In teacher centred classrooms, teachers are the ones who ask almost all the
questions. Most of the questions students ask are not thinking questions.
Examples of student questions in a teacher centred class are, “Can I please use
the restroom?” and “What is going to be on the test?” Those are important
questions, but in student centred classrooms, students also ask thinking
questions. Furthermore, in student centred classrooms, (1) the class develops
procedures for using the restroom, and (2) students play a role in developing
tests. Please note that the two activities from the previous sentence involve
thinking skills; so, even something that is teacher centred can become student
centred!
Think Aloud
Thinking aloud simply means that students say what they are thinking as they
do a task. By thinking aloud, students provide a window onto their minds for
themselves, their peers, and their teachers. For instance, when lower achievers
think aloud, their higher achieving partners have a better idea of what they do
and do not understand, and when higher achievers think aloud, their lower
achieving partners understand better how to learn from them.
One CL technique for encouraging students to think aloud is Thinker/Coach,
in which one student thinks aloud, while their partner listens and supports. This
support can be given by praising what the partner does well, and when the
partner has trouble, asking questions to guide the partner back on the right

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path. Teachers should model for students how to be the Thinker and how to be
the Coach. Here is an example of what teachers can say when they think aloud
while doing a grammar problem.
The problem: One of my friends ride/rides a bicycle to school.
Teacher: “ride” and “rides” are verbs; so, I have to figure out which noun or
pronoun is the subject which goes with the verb.
I see “friends.” That is a noun, and “one” is a pronoun. “Friends” is closest to

the verb, but I see the preposition “of” before “friends”; so, I guess “friends”
cannot be the subject. “One” must be the subject of the sentence. “One” is
singular; so, the verb must be “rides,” because it goes with singular nouns
and pronouns.
Process Approach to Writing

The process approach to writing was designed to teach students to use the
same process that professional writers use. A simple version of the steps in the
process approach is as follows:
1. Develop ideas by reading, interviewing, and brainstorming.
2. Put those ideas into a draft.
3. Revise the draft for organization and content until the writer is satisfied.
4. Proofread the draft for mechanical matters, such as grammar, punctuation,
and standardized font.
Also, it should be noted that the writing process is often a recursive process.
In other words, writers frequently repeat steps. For instance, while revising their
draft, writers may decide they need more ideas; so, they will read more or
brainstorm more.
Too often, students write alone, which is sad because they miss out on what
peers can contribute to their drafts, and when students do not help peers, they
miss out on learning from peers. CL can enhance the process approach to
writing in all its steps. For instance, in Step 1 of developing ideas, maybe
partners can help each other find ideas, and when discussing with peers, useful

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ideas may jump out, ideas that can be included in the draft in Step 2. Also, peers
can help with revising and proofreading, as will be explored in the next section
of this chapter.
Peer Feedback
A key aspect of student centeredness involves expanding students’ roles, so
that students take on some of the roles previously reserved only for teachers.
For example, in their CL groups, students can play the role of leaders. The
teacher remains the overall leader of the class, but students also play leadership
roles, in a system of distributed leadership. Distributed leadership means that
everyone can be a leader. The section in chapter four on Role Plays discusses
possible group roles for students, such as the role of encouraging others to
participate or being time keeper. These are leadership roles, because they help
the group succeed.
In the teacher centred classroom, teachers are the only people giving
feedback to students or to anyone else, because teachers are seen as the
experts, and compared to students, teachers are experts in English. However,
this is unfair, because the best way to learn something is to teach it to others. In
other words, “those who teach learn twice.” Therefore, it is unfair that teachers
have so many teaching opportunities, while students have few or no teaching
opportunities.
Giving feedback provides important teaching and learning opportunities
(Nicol, Thomson, & Breslin, 2014). Obviously, higher achievers can give feedback
to others, and the high achievers benefit from that process, just as teachers
benefit by explaining points to their students. Additionally, students benefit
psychologically by assisting their peers, because helping others boosts self-
esteem, and it contributes to the creation of a community of mutual caring
within the group and the classroom.
Lower achievers can also give feedback to higher achievers. For example, if
the class has a feedback checklist, lower achievers can give feedback on some of
the simpler points on that checklist. A feedback checklist for stories might
include some of the following points:
1. Does the story explain “who, what, when, where, why, and how?”
2. Was past tense used?

a
3. Were connectors of time, such as “Then” used?

4. Are there action verbs?
5. Are there adverbs and adjectives?
6. Do the events in the story happen in a logical order?
It is okay if lower achievers do not find any errors in their partners’ drafts; it
is still useful the lower achievers to highlight what was done well.
Giving feedback is not easy. Teachers need to model the giving of feedback.
Three of the points that should be remembered are:
1. Feedback can also be positive. Too many students think that all feedback
should be about errors. In reality, positive feedback encourages students to
repeat what they have done well and builds confidence.
2. Feedback can combine negative and positive. Including positive feedback
brightens the atmosphere, which otherwise would be darkened by a steady
raining of negative feedback.
3. Feedback should be specific. Instead of only saying that something was done
well, students should specifically tell peers what was done well.
Reflective Break
One of the concerns people have about peer feedback is that students may
not be able to provide correct feedback or that they may provide incorrect
feedback to their peer’s oral or written work. Do you agree with this? What can
you do to make peer feedback more effective?
Student’s Evaluation of Teaching

As explained earlier, student-centred learning gives students more power,
and CL bolsters that power, because there is strength in numbers. When
students have more power, they are likely to be more engaged, as the classroom
is no longer just the teacher’s class; students now too have ownership, and with
ownership comes responsibility. One way to increase student ownership arises
when students have a role in evaluation of what and how they learn. This
evaluation can take place at the end of a term, but it is probably better to do

a
evaluations more frequently. For example, it can be done at the end of a class
session just to evaluate that one session can be useful.
Teachers can seek student input at the end of a lesson simply by asking them
a few questions, such as:
1. What was this class about?
2. What was easy for you to learn?
3. What was difficult for you to learn?
4. What changes would you suggest?
CL can play a part in student evaluations, as students can discuss first in their
groups, perhaps using Circle of Speakers, before writing their feedback.
Dialog Journals
Dialog journals offer another way for students to make their voices heard,
and dialog journals are another teaching tool that can benefit from the inclusion
of peer interaction. The way that dialog journals traditionally work is for
students to write their journal entries, and later, teachers read students’ entries
and respond to the content of what students have written. Teachers do not
correct the journals for grammar and other areas of language form. Topics for
journal entries are flexible, ranging from classroom content and teaching
methods, to non-school matters in students’ lives.
Peer input on dialog journals has many advantages. Firstly, students receive
much more feedback and receive it much more quickly, because how often can
one teacher read and respond to 50 students’ journal entries? Secondly, when
students read and respond to peers’ entries, they have more material for
reading, as they read partners’ entries, and more opportunities for writing, as
they respond to peers’ entries. Thirdly, reading and responding to each other’s’
journals builds bonds among students, as they come to know each other better.

a
Conclusion
In education, we often see new ideas. As a result, it is not surprising that
teachers suffer what might be called “innovation fatigue,” feeling overwhelmed
trying to keep up with all the wonderful new ideas about teaching, such as CL.
One way to cope is to see the connections between the innovations. As seen in
this chapter, many proposed changes in education are actually part of one
overall change: a change towards more student centred learning. This chapter
has provided eight examples of such changes, all of which fit well with CL.

Although CL has been around for quite some time, at least since the 1970s,
and many teachers have already been using it in their teaching, some teachers
are not very confident yet about using it in their class and have raised valid
questions and concerns about its effectiveness. Furthermore, many students are
reluctant to cooperate with peers. Indeed, some teachers and students have
expressed their reservations about CL, fearing that it might hinder rather than
facilitate language learning. We feel that these concerns are quite normal as we,
the authors of this book, too, often feel worried when trying out new ways of
teaching our students. We list below some concerns and questions about CL
that we often hear from teachers and students, together with our responses to
them.
Students Use Their L1 During Group

Discussions
We understand that students may speak in their L1 when they are working in
groups. However, instead of being overly concerned, we can try to find out why
students are reluctant to use the target language in their groups and find ways
to address this. Our experience shows that students tend to use their L1 when
discussing something that they are not familiar with. If this is the case, the
teacher can pre-teach some of the vocabulary words and sentence structures

a
that students would need when discussing the unfamiliar topic. Another way to
build vocabulary for group tasks is for the class to watch a video clip of
competent speakers discussing the unfamiliar topic.
If students are generally reluctant to use the target language in their groups,
the teacher could use a variety of techniques to get the students to use more
English. Here are some useful techniques suggested by Gilbert, Goldstein,
Jacobs, & Winn-Bell Olsen (1997):
a. The class tries to come to a consensus as to how much L1 can be used in
class. As this is a collective decision, most students are likely to follow the
rule they themselves had a role in formulating.
b. One group member becomes a language monitor. Their job is to encourage
group members to use more English.
c. Students have talking chips. Every time they use their mother tongue, they
lose one talking chip. Those who use up their talking chips have to write a
brief reflection describing why they used their L1 and their future plan to use
more English.
d. Students have time to think or write before they speak to their partner.
When students have time to think first or to write down their ideas before
talking, they are more likely to use more English in their discussion, because
they have had time to remember or look up the English vocabulary they will
want to use.
e. Students do not need to be 100% correct when using English. Instead, they
should focus more on getting their ideas understood by their group members
using whatever L2 resources they have (yes, they can use gestures and other
body language to express their ideas). This way, students will not be afraid of
making mistakes and will not switch to their L1 too quickly.
My Class Becomes Very Noisy When

Students Learn in Groups
In a traditional teacher centred classroom, there is only one person who
speaks most of the time: the teacher. The students are usually quiet, as they are
expected to mostly listen to the teacher. With only one person speaking, the
class is generally not noisy. But when students work in CL groups, many students

a
often speak simultaneously, thus increasing the noise level of the classroom.
Because of this, teachers in the classrooms next door may complain about the
sound level. Here are some useful tips for addressing their concern:
a. Student talk is a good thing. A lot of learning happens when students share
and exchange their ideas with their peers. For example, when students work
in groups, they will have an opportunity to extend, elaborate on and refine
their initial understanding of important points from the lesson.
b. Teacher talk is not a bad thing. However, when the teacher does most of the
talking, students become passive recipients in the learning process and do
not learn as much as when they are more actively involved in the co-
construction of knowledge.
c. In order to reduce the sound level, the following techniques can be useful:
• Use pairwork instead of groupwork. In pairwork, one student speaks to

another student only, so they can sit close together and, therefore, do not
need to speak in loud voices.
• When doing groupwork, students control the volume of their voice and
use a voice that can be heard by their group members only.
• When in groups, students can alternate between talking and writing. This
could reduce the sound level.
• Differentiate between “bad noise” and “good noise”. Bad noise is when
students talk off topic. In contrast, good noise involves students talking on
task in order to promote each other’s learning.
Unequal Participation
Another concern is that when students work in groups, one or two students
dominate the discussion, while the rest quietly follow the discussion, give very
short responses or do not pay attention at all. We feel that the first thing to do
would be to find out why the participation is unequal. Is it because of the
dominating members or because of the quieter members or both? Perhaps, the
dominating members feel that they should do everything because the work will
be done quicker and better that way. What about the quieter members? Do

a
they lack the knowledge, skills and confidence needed for the task?
Once we know the sources of the problem, we can provide more substantial
content or language support before and while students work in their groups. For
example, students can read relevant materials from the internet and watch a
video clip of how competent users of English give opinions, explanations, etc.
about the topic under discussion. This way, these students may become more
willing and confident in contributing ideas in their groups.
Another strategy to promote more equal participation in groups is to assign
roles to students. Examples of roles include summarizer, time keeper,
complimenter, encourager, questioner, materials supplier, scribe and reporter.
When students take on roles, they are likely to participate more actively. These
roles should rotate so that students can try out a variety of roles, rather than
always do the roles at which they feel more confident and comfortable.
Teachers can also use the ‘talking chips’ strategy to further equalize the
amount of participation. For example, the quieter students can be given five
chips, while the more talkative ones can be given three chips. Every time they
speak, students surrender one talking chip. When they have no more chips
students cannot speak. Usually, the dominating students use all their chips first,
giving their peers more opportunities to speak. This continues until they use up
all of the chips, at which point all the chips are returned and the game begins
again.
Reflective Break
For each of the concerns identified above, can you suggest two or three
additional suggestions that work well in your teaching contexts?
The Blind Leading the Blind

Some teachers and students argue that putting students in groups may be a
waste of time as they will not be able to learn much from their peers. In fact,
they worry that students may learn incorrect language from their peers, given
their generally low proficiency in the target language. We feel that this
argument is not supported by research or by our experience implementing

a
cooperative learning in various contexts. First and foremost, classrooms seldom

consist of students with exactly the same proficiency level. Even if the classes
have been formed according to proficiency levels (e.g., high beginner class or
lower intermediate class), based on some placement tests, there are still large
differences among them, e.g., some may be good with grammar, but not so
good with vocabulary; some may be stronger in listening, but weaker in reading
or speaking, etc. So, we believe students can learn from each other when
working in groups.
Secondly, two or three heads can be better than one. Working with others
can provide a positive learning environment that allows students to explore
ideas from a wider perspective than if they work alone. They can generate more
ideas, discuss these ideas critically, revise and refine them and eventually select
the best group ideas that meet the criteria for the task at hand. Research also
suggests that when tasks are doable, students are capable of correcting each
others’ language mistakes, and they can also do this in a friendly and less
threatening manner.
Students Do Not Get Along with Their

Groupmates
Rather than helping one another, students may instead argue with each
other. Rather than working in harmony, students may sit together in an icy
silence. Especially when groups are first formed, students may not feel
comfortable working with people they do not know well, in the same way that
adults like us also do not find it easy to work with people who we do not know
that well. Fortunately, after working together for a while, students may become
comfortable with their new groupmates, the ice may melt and harmony may
increase.
Teambuilding activities can promote harmonious feelings among group
members. One way to do teambuilding involves groupmates in sharing about
themselves with each other, for example, telling about their habits, their families
and their likes and dislikes. Students can interview each other in pairs and then
share what they learned with the other pair in their group of four.
However, sometimes we notice that groups do not work optimally because

a
students have not learned how to work cooperatively in groups. If this is the
case, the teacher can step in and teach students some useful cooperative skills.
These skills overlap with conversational skills that students need in many social
situations. Students usually find it useful to learn cooperative skills, such as how
to respect others’ ideas, how to disagree politely, how to praise others and how
to ask for clarification. Useful phrases associated with these skills can also be
learned. Here are some examples:
• “You have a very valid point, but can I offer a different perspective?”
• “I really like your idea. Thank you very much for sharing that idea with the
group.”
• “Can you elaborate on your points so that I understand them better?”
• “It seems that we have different opinions about the issue. Your points are
useful, and so are mine.”
Jacobs (in Kimura 2009, p. 15) outlines a six-step procedure that can be
productively used to teach cooperative skills:
• discuss with students why the skill is important
• help students understand the verbal and non-verbal aspects (the words,
gestures and facial expressions) of using the skill
• allow students to practice the skill separate from their course content (e.g.,
in a grammar course, doing a role play involving the cooperative skill of
asking for reasons)
• encourage students to use the skill as they work together to learn course
content (e.g., asking each other for reasons while doing a grammar task)
• involve students in discussing how and how well they have been using the
skill, perhaps with the aid of teacher and student observation
aid students over a long period of time in using the skill regularly and
automatically.

a
Students Talk about Other Things Not

Related to the Topic
Yes, students may go off topic when in their groups. They may get side-
tracked during the discussion and talk about unrelated topics. Actually, some of
this is normal for any group. For instance, when teachers have a team meeting,
we often do some chit-chatting before we get down to business. This chit-
chatting, just like the teambuilding mentioned earlier in this chapter, promotes a
friendly feeling in the group.
To help students stay on task, the following suggestions might be useful:
• Explain the task clearly
• Put the instructions on the screen or on the board
• Ask one student in the class (or one student per group) to repeat the
instructions
• Set a clear and reasonable time limit (but be flexible about enforcing the
time limit, e.g., if students have five minutes to do a task, but after five
minutes have passed, they are still on task, give a bit more time)
• Appoint a group leader whose job is, among others, to make sure that the
group is on task
• Circulate among the groups and remind students to stay focused on the task
Use an online countdown timer (e.g. http://www.online-
stopwatch.com/countdown-clock/) and show this on the screen.
CL Takes up a Lot of Curriculum Time

We hear this concern a lot. CL does take quite a bit of curriculum time, but
we feel that it is time well spent. As the book has made clear, CL can result in
deeper and more robust learning as students have more opportunities to think
more deeply, exchange ideas with their peers and further stretch their
understanding about a topic in a socially supportive environment. Yes, teacher-
fronted teaching can be more efficient in terms of time, but the quality of
learning may not be as strong.

a
If we truly value quality over quantity of learning, then we need to re-assess

our conception about curriculum time. We believe that curriculum time should
be used to increase the level of student engagement in the learning process,
and not simply used to cover as much content as possible. We are often
reminded that our most important job as a teacher is not to ‘cover’ the
curriculum, but to help students ‘discover’ the curriculum. CL is one of the best
ways to do this.
Reflective Break
What do you think about our response to the concern that CL takes up a lot of
curriculum time? Do you agree with us? Give reasons.
Teachers May Lose Control of the

Classroom
This concern, while understandable, is a misconception about what
classroom learning should be like. Some teachers, students, parents,
administrators and other stakeholders still seem to think that teachers’ most
important role is to be instructors, who are expected to do most if not all of the
talking and explaining during the lesson, while the students are supposed to be
passively listening. Conducting a lesson in this way may give the erroneous
impression that the teacher is in control of the classroom and that students are
learning optimally, but what is really happening in their minds is something that
we cannot really control.
As this book has hopefully made clear to the readers, when students do CL,
they are learning to take more responsibility for their learning with help from
teachers. When students interact in CL groups, they have opportunities to
deepen and refine their understanding, they get to learn from their peers, and
as a result, they learn more from the lesson. When students work in their CL
groups, teachers are not just sitting idly but continue to provide ongoing
scaffolding so that students get the most from interacting in their groups. Thus,
when students work in groups, teachers are not losing control; they continue to
be in ‘control’, monitoring whether students are on task and are making gains in
their language proficiency and at how to do language learning.

a
Formative assessment provides a good way for teachers and students to

control what happens during class. Summative assessment measures learning
after teaching has finished, but formative assessment measures learning while
teaching takes place. For example, when students do a task in groups of two and
teachers monitor student performance, combined with peer and self-
assessment, the class can see how well students are doing. Then, based on the
outcome of the formative assessment, students and teachers can use their joint
control of the class to decide what best to do during the remainder of the class.
Reflective Break
We have discussed eight concerns that teachers have about CL and offered
our suggestions for addressing these issues. Are there other issues or concerns
that we haven’t covered in this chapter? Can you list some of them and suggest
ways of addressing them?

This book has been fairly short on pages, but it has been very long on ideas
for making the learning of English and anything else more lively and more
effective. Here are eight suggestions for implementing these ideas.
1. Start with Success for Yourself
Begin using CL with just one class, a class that seems to like you and like each
other. If you teach the same class all day, begin using CL in just one area of what
you teach. For instance, if you especially enjoy teaching writing, start with
writing. The main point is that we should start with what is likely to work before
taking on bigger challenges.
2. Start with Success for Students
The same point about starting easy applies not only to teachers but also to
students. The first times they use CL or the first times they use a new CL
technique, the content should be easy, so that students can gain confidence that
they can learn with peers.
3. Cooperate with Your Colleagues
CL is not only for students; teachers too can benefit from cooperating with
peers. Teachers can share experiences, happy and not so happy. Also, teachers
can share lesson plans and trouble-shooting tips.
4. Colleagues are Everywhere
Not only can teachers cooperate with fellow teachers at the same school,
teachers can also go online to share with colleagues in other schools, in another
part of the country or another part of the world. For instance, the Teacher

a
Voices Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachervoices/)

offers one vehicle for teacher-teacher cooperation.
5. Continue to Learn
In addition to this book, there are many other resources for learning about
CL. Many of those resources are online, such as the following websites:
a. International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education
(IASCE). Check out the Resources and Newsletter pages
http://www.iasce.net
b. Cooperative Learning Institute. The Institute offers research updates, a
newsletter, and information on many publications and other materials on
CL. Co-Directors: Roger T. Johnson and David W. Johnson - http://www.co-
operation.org
c. Program for Complex Instruction, Stanford University (USA). This site
features the work of Elizabeth Cohen, Rachel Lotan, and their colleagues
which has focused on the sociology of cooperative learning groups, in
particular the treatment of status differences among group members -
http://www.stanford.edu/group/pci/
d. The Jigsaw Classroom. This site contains information on Jigsaw, one of the
oldest and best-known cooperative learning techniques. Among the
features of the site are history about Jigsaw, a description of how to
implement the technique, troubleshooting ideas, a list of books and
articles about Jigsaw, and information of recent related work by Eliot
Aronson, one of the originators of the technique.
http://www.jigsaw.org/index.html
e. Richard Felder’s Homepage. Richard teaches engineering at North
Carolina State (USA) University. Lots of good stuff here related to CL.
http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/ users/f/felder/public/
f. Yael Sharan’s Homepage. Yael is very active with the IASCE (International
Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education) and is best known
for co-creating the Group Investigation technique in cooperative learning.
Group Investigation guides students as they do group projects.
https://sites.google.com/site/ yaelsharancooperativelearning/publications

a
g. George Jacobs' articles on cooperative learning (http://jcu-sg.

academia.edu/GeorgeJacobs)
6. Look for Ways to Spread Cooperation in Your School/University Generally
Please remember the CL principle of Cooperation as a Value. Ways to
implement that principle in a school include:
a. De-emphasise competition. Competition takes place not only in sports
but in other aspects of school, such as contests and ranking of students.
Instead, place the emphasis on everyone winning, such as by improving
on their own past performance.
b. Promote cross-age and peer tutoring schemes after class because they
encourage students to see each other as allies rather than rivals.
c. Set up after-school schemes that allow students to study together.
d. Encourage service learning activities such as helping disabled people in
the community near the school (Olson, 2002).
e. Do School Classified Advertisements, in which students write short
classified advertisements with things that they can teach or help with or
things they want to learn or on which they need help. Examples of areas
in which students can help one another are: making origami, becoming
better organized, finding a partner for chess, getting along with parents,
and learning English. This activity can be an on-going one, continuing
throughout the year.
7. Look for Ways to Spread Cooperation Beyond the School
One of the best ways for teachers to build their belief in CL is to experience
cooperation in non-school aspects of their lives, such as with their family,
friends, and community groups. When teachers see the benefits of CL in their
own lives, they will want their students to enjoy to same benefits as part of their
learning.
8. Mentor Other Teachers
Just as students learn about English by teaching their peers, so too can
teachers learn about CL by teaching it to their fellow teachers. Such teaching
can include visiting each other’s classes, helping each other with Action
Research, and just taking time for informal reflection.

a
Baloche, L. (1998). The cooperative classroom: Empowering learning. Upper

Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Dörnyei, Z., & Ushioda, E. (2013). Teaching and researching: Motivation. London,
United Kingdom: Routledge.
Gilbert, C., Goldstein, S., Jacobs, G. M., & Winn-Bell Olsen, J. (1997). Six
questions and 58 answers about using cooperative learning. ThaiTESOL
Bulletin, 10(1), 16-24.
Jacobs, G. M., & McCafferty, S. G. (2006). Connections between cooperative
learning and second language learning and teaching. In S. G. McCafferty,
G. M. Jacobs, & Iddings, C. (Eds.), Cooperative learning and second
language teaching (pp. 18-29). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Jacobs, G. M., Power, M. A., & Loh, W. I. (2002). The teacher's sourcebook for
cooperative learning: Practical techniques, basic principles, and frequently
asked questions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Jacobs, G. M., & Renandya, W. A. (2016). Student-centred learning in ELT. In W.
A. Renandya & H. P. Widodo (Eds.), English language teaching
today: Linking theory and practice (pp. 13-23). Basel, Switzerland:
Springer International Publishing AG.
Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2003). Assessing students in groups: Promoting
group responsibility and individual accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Corwin Press.
Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Holubec, E. J. (2013). Cooperation in the
classroom (8th ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.
Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. (1998). Active learning: Cooperation in
the college classroom (Revised ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book
Company.

a
Kimura, H. (2009). Controversy over cooperative learning: An interview with Dr

George M Jacobs. The Language Teacher, 3(38), 13-16.
Nicol, D., Thomson, A., & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in
higher education: A peer review perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in
Higher Education, 39(1), 102-122.
Ogle, D. M. (1986). KWL: A teaching model that develops active reading of
expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39(6), 564-570.
Olson, K. (2002). Connecting with their communities. Community College
Journal, 72(5), 23-27.
Pan, H. L. W., Nyeu, F. Y., & Cheng, S. H. (2017). Leading school for learning:
Principal practices in Taiwan. Journal of Educational Administration, 55(2).
Retrieved from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/JEA-06-
2016-0069.
Sharan, Y., & Sharan, S. (1992). Expanding cooperative learning through Group
Investigation. Colchester, VT: Teachers College Press.
Slavin, R. E. (2014). Making cooperative learning powerful. Educational
Leadership, 72(2), 22-26.

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TEFLIN TEACHER DEVELOPMENT SERIES

Series Editors: Willy A Renandya & Nur Hayati

Introducing Task-based Language Teaching by Rod Ellis

If you have any queries, please contact:

First published 2019

George M Jacobs & Willy A Renandya

TEFLIN Teacher Development Series

Through the TEFLIN Publication Division, we have published volumes

We are indebted to Dr Willy A Renandya for sharing with us his

We hope this series will serve its purpose, to empower English

Joko Nurkamto Yazid Basthomi

Cooperative Learning in Language Education ii

The booklets in the Series are written in an accessible and teacher-

Cooperative Learning in Language Education iii

We would like to again extend our utmost gratitude to Dr George M

Cooperative Learning in Language Education iv

FOREWORD FROM THE PUBLISHERS .......................................................................ii

Cooperative Learning in Language Education v

1. Eight Advantages of Students Learning Together – what are key potential

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 1

2. Eight Principles for Designing Successful Group Activities – what are

4. Eight Techniques for Organizing Student-Student Interaction – how to

7. Eight Connections between CL and Other Student Centred Ways to Learn –

8. Eight Concerns Teachers Have about CL – what difficulties teachers have

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 2

David Johnson of the Cooperative Learning Institute of the University of

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 3

6. Students feel less anxiety

Students Are More Active

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 4

Students Receive More Help

Students Think More Deeply

Teaching is not easy; it requires deep thinking to explain, to give examples,

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 5

Students Are More Motivated

Students Enjoy Learning More

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 6

Students Feel Less Anxiety

Students Become More Independent

Students Learn More

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 7

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 8

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 9

Maximum Peer Interactions

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 10

when students learn by interacting with peers. In addition to explaining to each

Equal Opportunity to Participate

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 11

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 12

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 13

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 14

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 15

Students and the broader society benefit from heterogeneous groups in

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 16

Teaching of Cooperative Skills

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 17

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 18

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 19

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 20

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 21

students from top to bottom based on English proficiency. If teachers do not

Cooperative Learning in Language Education 22

3. What do you like to read, in any language?