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Table 3.4 Role Assignments and Job Description
Role 
Job Description 
Leader 
The leader is the chairperson who hosts the group discussion and 
makes sure that each member is on task by participating in the 
discussion or any given task. 
Recorder 
The recorder needs to take notes during the discussion. The written 
report will be given to the reporter. 
Reporter 
The reporter is responsible for reporting the summary of his/her 
group’s discussion to the class on behalf of his/her team.
Timer 
The timer controls the time given to their group and makes sure that 
the assigned task is completed in time. If time is not enough to 
complete the task, the timer has to request more time from the 
teacher. 
Checker 
The checker makes sure that each one in the group finishes the 
worksheet or assigned task in class. If someone in the group has 
problem completing the individual worksheet, the checker reports to 
the leader who decides what kind of help will be given to that 
member. 
Quiet Captain The quiet captain sees to it that the group does not disturb other 
groups. 
Each student had to rotate the roles every two weeks. The rotation was to 

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ensure that each student had equal chance to experience all the roles and to share 
different kinds of responsibility. Besides rotating each of the roles mentioned 
above, the students were also paired within the group. The pairs were available 
whenever the teacher needed to use the technique of Talk-Pair. One thing to note 
about the seat arrangement of the Talk-Pair was that the pair had to sit face to face, 
allowing sufficient eye contact during pair interaction. Allowing eye contact 
during face-to-face interaction was important to the acquisition of cooperative skills 
as well as the development of communicative competence. 
In each lesson during the experimental span, Ms. Lee gave them enough time 
for group interactions. Depending on the nature of the learning task, the group 
interactions sometimes took the form of oral summary after one learning activity or 
Ms. Lee’s lecture, with fellow members giving and receiving feedback or giving 
explanations to each other. The oral summary could be done in the group with any 
appointed member (mostly the recorder) to share his or her class notes. After the 
group summary on the notes, the reporter from each group made a summary of their 
notes to the whole class. Ms. Lee would check to see if the students had any 
misunderstanding in the learning process or learning materials presented. To 
pause once in a while for group reflections upon the content helped students on task 
and concentrate to a great extent. Many of the misconceptions were clarified in 
time during the group summary time. 
Sometimes the students practiced the dialogues in their textbooks with their 
pairs until they could memorize the subject matter and role-play without reading 
their books. More often than not, the students were asked to exchange their 
workbooks, worksheets, or textbooks with their partners for the purpose of peer 
editing and peer correction.

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3.2.2.3 Positive Reinforcement 
During the experimental time span, the students were encouraged through 
methods of positive reinforcement with (1) the Mountain Climbing Chart during each 
class and (2) the writing of “thank-you notes” at the end of each class.
The Mountain Climbing Chart (Appendix C) was put on the upper right hand 
side of the blackboard each time Ms. Lee walked into the classroom. There were six 
group names on top of it and six yellow magnetic balls at the very bottom. There 
was also a column of scores starting from 60 to 100, with five points between each 
interval.
Whenever a desirable behavior occurred in any group, the score of that 
group will be added. For example, when someone volunteered to read or to 
answer a question in class, Ms. Lee would move the ball upward from the group 
that student belonged to. And sometimes Ms. Lee moved the ball upward when 
one group was attentive on task to solve the problems on worksheets. More 
often than not, Ms. Lee shifted the position of the magnetic ball by moving one 
step upward when one group was reading English together loudly. 
The swift movement of her body and the climbing of the balls became a big 
stimulus to get students’ attention to observe closely what their classmates were doing 
and to reflect upon their own behavior in class. The scores were calculated at the 
end of each class, which weighed 20 percent of the students’ average. This chart 
was always there on the upper right hand side of the blackboard during the 
experimental time span. Later on when students assumed more learning 
responsibility, the group in charge of the presentation was also entitled to award their 
classmates by moving the magnetic ball upwards.
Another method of positive reinforcement was the writing of “thank-you notes” 
at the end of each class. The participants had to acknowledge one of their group 

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members by writing specific thank-you notes in the last column of the worksheets 
given to them for each activity. 
Most students did not know how to appreciate others in the beginning of the 
study. They could not think of anyone or anything to thank for. Therefore, Ms. Lee 
had to model how to thank someone specifically. For example, she thanked Mary 
for helping her carry the tape recorder to the classroom in the first period. In the 
second period, Shimin was acknowledged for reading English out loud. Gradually, 
the participants started to learn the skills of appreciating others, no matter how minor 
their contribution or strength might be. Ms. Lee would assign three to five students 
to read their thank-you-notes in the last ten minutes of the class. The rest of the 
thank-you-notes would be posted in the bulletin board of the classroom.