穨Review. Pdf

development. Vygotsky defined the zone of proximal development as the 
discrepancy between the student's actual developmental level (i.e., independent 
achievement) and his/her potential level (achievement with help from a more 
competent partner). From the frequent interaction with their peers, the high- and 
low-achievers in the experimental group were able to fully develop their potential and 
thus move beyond their current development to the so-called i+1 (Krashen, 1985).
According to Krashen (1985), language acquisition took place during human 
interaction in an environment of the foreign language when the learner received 
language input that was one step beyond his/her current stage of linguistic 
competence (Krashen, 1985). Taken together, both Krashen’s ‘i+1’ and Vygotsky’s 
zone of proximal development could hardly be achieved without the help of peer 
interaction and cooperation. 
Furthermore, the high and low achievers were able to progress at their own pace 
because, in Bandura’s view, the acquisition of complex skills and abilities depended 
not only on the processes of attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation, 
but also on the learners’ sense of self-efficacy and the learners’ self-regulatory system.
Immanual Kant (Ya ger, 1991) further elaborated this idea by asserting that human 
beings were not passive recipients of information (Yager, 1991). Learners actively 
constructed knowledge, connected it to previously assimilated knowledge, and made 
it theirs by constructing their own interpretation (Brooks & Brooks, 1999; Cheek, 

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1992).
In a cooperative learning classroom, each individual was allowed to construct 
learning based on his or her past/current knowledge. That was why both the high- 
and low-achievers in the experimental group were able to progress at their own pace 
and, at the same time, contribute to their peers’ learning. As shown in Tables 4.22 
and 4.24, both the high- and low-achievers in the experimental group scored 
significantly higher on all of the five items of the linguistic competence, i.e. 
appropriateness, vocabulary, fluency, accuracy, and intelligibility, in the post oral task.
Such findings corresponded to a major theme in constructivism. According to 
Bruner (1973), learning was an active process in which learners constructed new ideas 
or concepts based upon their current and past knowledge (Bruner, 1966; 1973). The 
learners selected and transformed information. They constructed hypotheses and 
made decisions, relying on a cognitive structure to do so. Cognitive structure (i.e., 
schema, mental models) provided meaning and organization to experiences and 
allowed the individual to go beyond the information given to them (Brunner, 1973, 
1990). So the high achievers were encouraged to explore English learning beyond 
their textbooks and the low achievers were not discouraged by the school-wide 
monthly examinations. Each individual was entitled to successful learning 
experiences in such a cooperative learning context. 
However, as a sharp contrast to the improvements made by the high- and 
low-achievers in the experimental group, performance of the control group was not 
satisfactory. The high achievers in the control group scored significantly higher only 
on the item of grammar, as shown in Table 4.23. The learning outcome for the 
low-achievers was even worse. As a sharp contrast to the significant progress in all 
of the five aspects of linguistic competence of the low achievers in the experimental 
group, as illustrated in Table 4.24, the low achievers in the control group did not make 

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any progress at all. To make matters worse, their scores on the item of fluency even 
dropped significantly (p < .00) in the post oral performance, as shown in Table 4.25.
Such results could be explained partially by reference to Vygotsky’s theory of 
cognitive development.
According to Vygotsky (1978), an essential feature of learning was that it 
awakened a variety of internal developmental processes that were able to operate only 
when the learner was in the action of interacting with people in his or her environment 
and in cooperation with his or her peers. Therefore, when it came to language 
learning, the authenticity of the environment and the affinity between its participants 
were essential elements to make the learner feel part of this environment.
Unfortunately, these elements were rarely present in traditional classrooms. The 
basic premise of this theory was that development was social and knowledge was 
constructed by interaction of individuals with others and learning was the 
internalization of that social interaction. The students in the control group, without 
much opportunity to interact with their peers, tended to be limited in their language 
development, especially the low achievers who were easily neglected in a traditional 
classroom. Without such an interactive context, the zone of proximal development 
in both the high and low achievers in the control group was not fully developed. The 
results of the oral scores of the high- and low achievers in the control group 
confirmed numerous educational reports that pointed out that the solitary models of 
the traditional teaching method tended to make students overly passive and indifferent 
to what was being taught (Hamm & Adams, 1992; Liang, 1996; Wei, 1997).
Recognizing the individual differences and allowing individual growth in a 
heterogeneous language ability class also contributed to the enhancement of the 
students’ motivational involvement in learning. Slavin (1995) indicated that most 
studies had found higher proportions of time on-task for students studying in 

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cooperative learning context than in the control group. The findings of the academic 
achievements of the high- and low-achievers in this study lent support to Slavin’s 
(1995) and Cheng’s (2000) studies that cooperative learning helped students remain 
on task and boost their motivation to learn. 
Taken as a whole, cooperative learning answered the three research questions 
positively on the effects on EFL learners’ language learning, motivation, and the 
various needs of the students with mixed levels of English proficiency. The findings 
of the present study, as discussed above, echoed the four advantages of group work 
proposed by Brown (2001). According to Brown (2001), cooperative learning, or 
group work, yielded four major advantages for English language classroom: (1) group 
work generated interactive language, (2) group work offered an embracing affective 
climate, (3) group work promoted learner responsibility and autonomy, and (4) group 
work was a step toward individualized instruction.