穨Review. Pdf

3.2 Instructional Design 
The instructional design of cooperative learning in the experimental group was 
integrated within the students’ regular English curriculum. The teaching materials 
that the students studied were mainly from the junior high school textbook, Book II, 
for both groups. The instructional design presented in this section included the 
teaching procedures in the control group and those in the experimental group. The 
teaching procedures and activities in the control group belonged to the traditional 
method, which involved mainly the Grammar Translation and some of the 
Audio-lingual method. The integration of these two methods, according to Yu 
(1995), “was the most popular teaching methods used in EFL classes all over the 
island [Taiwan](p. 80).” In addition to the use of Grammar Translation with a little 
Audio-lingual method, the traditional teaching method in this study also included 
isolated learning context, as opposed to that of the cooperative leaning in the 
experimental group (Wei, & Chen, 1993). As Tsai (1998) and Yu (1995) assumed 
that most people were familiar with the features and procedures of the 
grammar-translation and audio-lingual methods, the descriptions of the instructional 
design in the control group were not as detailed and lengthy as those in the 
experimental group. 

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3.2.1 Control Group 
There were three major sections in the junior high school textbook, Book II, that 
Ms. Lee needed to teach in each lesson: (1) vocabulary, (2) dialogue, and (3) sentence 
structure. The method of teaching each of the three components would be described 
in the subsequent sections. 
3.2.1.1 Vocabulary 
A typical way to start a new lesson in the textbook was by introducing the 
vocabulary first. The common way for Ms. Lee to introduce the vocabulary was to 
write the words on the blackboard and ask the students to repeat after her. Then, Ms. 
Lee explained the part of speech, grammatical functions, collocation, and word usage 
by means of definition, description, and translation. Students spent most of the class 
time listening to the teacher’s analysis of the grammar, Chinese translation, and 
sometimes practicing making sentences. Once in a while, two or three students were 
assigned to answer some of the questions Ms. Lee asked during her lecture. 
3.2.1.2 Dialogue 
As for the dialogue, Ms. Lee explained the meaning of the content first in 
Chinese and then asked the students to repeat after her. Sometimes they listened to 
the cassette and repeated after the tape for two or three times, as the Audio-lingual 
method suggested. Then, two or more students were randomly appointed to 
role-play the dialogue on the stage while the rest of the class watched and listened to 
their performance. There were two or three pairs at most selected to practice the 
dialogue in front of the class during one class period. Most of the students listened 
passively and quietly while the chosen pairs were practicing on the stage. 
3.2.1.3 Sentence Structure 
The part on sentence structure was mainly taught through the explanation of 
grammatical terms translated into Chinese. The sentence structure in each lesson 

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was usually broken into discrete elements of grammatical function, such as nouns, 
verb-to-be, adjectives, gerund, infinitive, pronoun, etc. and then the relationship 
between the grammatical elements was analyzed. In such a traditional learning 
context, students listened passively to their teacher’s lecture without much 
student-student interaction for maximal practice of the target language. 
In sum, the traditional method used in the control group incorporated the 
following features: (1) texts translation from L2 (English) to L1 (Chinese), (2) 
explanation of grammatical rules, (3) vocabulary explanation from bilingual word 
lists, (4) analyses of sentence structure, (5) mother tongue of Chinese used as the 
medium of instruction, (6) listening to and repeating after the tape or the teacher. 
3.2.2 Experimental Group 
The intervention in the experimental group included two major phases, one 
before the first monthly examination (Phase One) as warm-up for cooperative 
learning, and the other after (Phase Two) as shown in Table 3.1.