穨Review. Pdf

CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSIONS, CONCLUSIONS, AND IMPLICATIONS 
The results presented in Chapter Four suggest that the students studying in the 
cooperative context outperform the students in the control group who study English in 
the traditional method. The effects of cooperative learning seem salient in enhancing 
the EFL junior high school students’ language learning, especially their 
communicative competence, and motivation toward learning English as a foreign 
language. The high- and low-achievers are able to grow at their own pace, and, at 
the same time, contribute to their peers’ learning. The results yielded in this study 
will be discussed according to the research questions: 
1. 
What are the effects of cooperative learning on the improvement of the EFL 
learners’ language learning in terms of communicative competence and the 
school monthly achievement tests? 
2. 
What are the effects of cooperative learning on the EFL learners’ motivation 
toward learning English as a foreign language? 
3. 
What are the effects of cooperative learning on the high/low achievers in a 
heterogeneous class? 
Based upon the findings discussed, guidelines of implementing cooperative 
learning are thus proposed and conclusions are drawn. The pedagogical implications, 
limitations of the present study, and suggestions for further research are also included 
in this chapter. 

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5.1 Effects of Cooperative Learning and Language Learning 
The significant gains of the experimental group on the interaction-based oral task 
supported Brown’s (1994) and Kagan’s (1995) views that cooperative learning was 
actually a practice that could put the communicative approach into action. Due to 
the socially oriented lessons taught and learned through small group interaction, the 
students in the experimental group were able to demonstrate better, and significantly 
better, linguistic competence, discourse competence, strategic competence, and 
non-verbal communicative competence than the control group. Such findings were 
congruent with Wei’s (1997) claim that cooperative learning was considered the must 
and the best instructional format enhancing learner’s communicative competence. 
The possible reasons to account for the significant gains in the experimental 
group in terms of their improvement in the four aspects of the oral communicative 
competence could be synthesized into the following categories: (1) the increase of 
student talk through comprehensible input, interaction, and output; (2) the incentive 
structures of positive reinforcement; and (3) the supportive and communicative 
learning context. These three mechanisms of cooperative learning seemed to 
contribute to the students’ oral communicative competence, as demonstrated in the 
results of this study.
In a cooperative learning context, there were many interactive tasks that would 
naturally stimulate the students' cognitive, linguistic, and social abilities.
Cooperative activities tended to integrate the acquisition of these skills and create 
powerful learning opportunities. As Wei (1997) stated, interactions between more 
than two persons were the necessities for effective communication activities and oral 
practice.
The experimental group was endowed with more opportunities to actually 

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practice the target language in class through many of the student-centered activities.
Almost in each lesson, the students were asked to practice and perform the dialogues 
in the textbook with their talk pairs who sat in front of them until they could talk 
freely without referring back to their textbooks. The frequent practice of the 
dialogues with talk-pairs and the Inside-Outside Circle might be an important factor 
contributing to the students’ acquisition of oral communicative competence. And 
both the self-correction and the peer-correction occurred during the student-centered 
activities also contributed to encourage the active roles of the students. 
The inter- and intra-group significant gains of the oral tasks in the experimental 
group, as shown in Table 4.3 and Table 4.4, corresponded to the three arguments 
suggested by Liang (1996): (1) group work helped students to overcome the anxiety 
of speaking a foreign language because speaking with a peer is less threatening than 
speaking to a teacher in front of the whole class; (2) group activities gave students 
more opportunities to use the target language; (3) working in a group could largely 
reduce the anxiety of speaking a foreign language in class. Thus, the quality of 
communication of the experimental group was better than that in the control group.
And the amount of student-talk was further maximized by activities that involved pair 
work and group work, which engaged all the students in speaking. 
Almost up to 80 percent of the class time in the experimental group was 
scheduled for activities that included a lot of student talk in the target language. And 
the student talk was done simultaneously so that almost all of the students were 
engaged in language production and practice. The student-centered method of 
cooperative learning helped to increase the active communication for the students in 
the experimental group.
The increase of student talk in the experimental group indicated that cooperative 
learning could foster language development through increased active communication 

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and frequent use of the target language for academic and social purposes (Cohen, 
1984; Dörnyei & Malderez, 1997; Kagan, 1995). According to Wei (1997), many of 
the activities in a cooperative learning language class corresponded to those 
advocated in the communicative approach. Ghaith and Shaaban (1995) also argued 
that cooperative learning used in language teaching often “result in higher quality of 
discourse competence as the students better comprehend each other as well as take 
opportunities to practice their paralinguistic skills—gestures, facial, and shoulder 
expressions, and so on (p. 26).”
In other words, in a less threatening learning context as that of cooperative 
learning, the students in the experimental group were able to demonstrate higher oral 
classroom participation, which was related to their statistical significant gain in the 
language proficiency (Lin, 1993; Zhou, 1991; Zhou, 2002), and higher level of peer 
interaction, which was an essential feature of learning when the learners were in the 
action of interacting with people in their environment and in cooperation with their 
peers (Vygotsky, 1978). Such findings of the significant improvement of the 
students’ oral communicative competence, as shown in Table 4.3, were similar to 
Bejarano’s (1987) field experiment of the ESL junior high school learners in Israel 
who studied in cooperative learning performed better on overall English proficiency 
than the control group. 
In addition to the learning of the verbal communicative competence, some 
non-verbal features of such competence also developed along with the increased 
amount of student talk. The non-verbal features could reduce or enhance the effects 
of verbal communication (Upshur, 1979).
The non-verbal features of eye contact, 
smile, and proper conversational distance identified in this study corresponded to 
Upshur (1979)’s discussion of non-linguistic factors on second language performance 
tests. As Upshur (1979) observed, sometimes the non-verbal factors can affect the 

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results of verbal expressions, as discussed in the literature review in Chapter Two. 
The experimental group had more opportunities to formally and informally 
interact with their teacher as well as their peers, and, therefore, had more chances to 
be corrected by their teacher whenever inappropriate behaviors occurred. With the 
frequent encounter of new talk pairs through the Inside-Outside Circle, it forced the 
students in the experimental group to use more facial expressions, hand gestures, or 
even body language to make them understood than those in the control group. 
Being able to display eye contact and smile might be attributed to the reason that 
the students felt more secured and supportive learning with their peers. Role-playing 
might not seem as threatening as they experienced in the previous semester when they 
were isolated learners. The smile might also be an indicator that they started to 
enjoy English class or they felt more relaxed in the cooperative context. Maybe that 
was the reason why the experimental group displayed more eye contact and smile 
during the oral task. Smile could be an essential non-verbal language in 
communication, especially when some of the students forgot their lines during the 
oral task. Their partners’ smile would be very encouraging and supportive at this 
critical moment. 
It was interesting to note that when the students were able to express verbal 
apology to their partners, they were able to smile. Smile was the natural body 
language to accompany that verbal apology. Though unable to utter verbal apology, 
at least one student from the experimental group still managed to smile to reduce the 
awkwardness and embarrassment caused by his own silence. It seemed that most 
students in the experimental group were not totally frightened by the occurrence of 
communication breakdown. They were, at least, able to keep eye contact with their