穨Review. Pdf

Talk-Pair and Inside-Outside Circle were explicitly designed to provide redundancy 
of output opportunities (Kagan, 1995). The three methods of Three-Step Interview, 
Talk-Pair, and Inside-Outside Circle mentioned above would be explained in more 
details later in the discussions on cooperative learning methods. Even informal 
cooperative learning discussion provided redundancy as students discuss a topic with 
each of their teammates. There was not enough time in the traditional classroom to 
call on each student to talk more than once on a topic. As Yu (1995) noted that the 
active use of language such as comprehending a discourse or producing a discourse 
involved complexity of communication and use of language. In conclusion, Yu 
(1995) claimed that a cooperative learning class was an ideal place for such language 
development. 
2.2.3 Context 
In addition to the variables of input and output discussed above, language 
acquisition was fostered if it occurred in a context that was supportive, friendly, 

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motivating, communicative, developmentally appropriate, and feedback rich (Kagan, 
1995). Kagan (1995) argued that the traditional classroom was far from supportive 
as students were easily labeled “right” or “wrong” after they answered questions 
before the whole class (Chen & Feng, 2000; Lai, 2002; Wei & Chen, 1993) 
The advocate of supportive and feedback rich context for language acquisition 
corresponded in part to the Affective Filter Hypothesis (Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982), 
which stated that if learners were anxious, on the defensive, or not motivated, they 
might understand the input, but the input would not necessarily enter the language 
acquisition device, and would not, of course, produce output. 
The Affective Filter Hypothesis, though a hypothesis in need of further 
experimental support, was not hard to detect in most traditional classrooms. It was 
often the case that some students were not ready to give a speech to a whole class but 
were quite at ease talking to their group members. Speech to a whole class was 
often a threatening experience to most students. We, teachers in Taiwan, usually 
experience silence when we ask our students: “Do you have any questions?” Even 
some of the students were still confused and were in need of further explanation, they 
tend to choose silence when given the opportunity to clarify their confusion (Wei, 
1997b). Another reason for the silence in class, according to Huang (1995), was the 
feeling of anxiety that students brought to a language classroom. The emotions of 
discomfort and apprehension would be aggravated with the fear of losing face when 
using the target language incorrectly, which, in turn, inhibited the EFL learners from 
speaking up in class (Huang, 1995). 
As the examination on how cooperative learning transformed input, output, and 
context variables in the direction of facilitating language acquisition, it was not hard 
to draw the conclusion that communicative language teaching could be best enacted in 
EFL classroom through cooperative learning (Kagan, 1995). Put it in Kagan’s (1995) 

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words: cooperative learning and communicative language teaching was natural match.