穨Review. Pdf

5.7 Limitations and Suggestions 
Though some positive findings were identified in this study to claim the 
effectiveness of cooperative learning on the EFL junior high school learners’ 
language learning and motivation toward learning English, some limitations of the 
present study might be noted before the results could be generalized.
Firstly, the samples of the participants were restricted to only two classes of the 

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first year junior high school students. Future studies on more student participants or 
more teachers implementing cooperative learning in more classes are recommended in 
order to generate more evidence on the effects of cooperative learning. 
Moreover, the data collected for the analysis of the students’ communicative 
competence was based on the design of two interaction-based oral tasks. Though 
four aspects of oral communicative competence were under investigation, the 
students’ communicative competence in writing, reading, and listening were not 
measured in this study. Even if the school-wide monthly achievement tests collected 
in this study covered reading, writing, and listening, the content of those tests were 
more structure-based than communicative oriented. With time and funding 
permitted, future research might develop reliable and valid measurements to include 
the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking to examine the 
effects of cooperative learning on EFL learners’ overall communicative competence. 
Another suggestion for further study is about the teacher development in 
cooperative learning. Being limited to the scope of the research questions, which 
focused on the effects of cooperative learning in EFL teaching, this study did not 
investigate the possible factors that might affect the success of teacher development in 
cooperative learning.
As mentioned earlier, the researcher offered a 40-hour workshop of teacher 
development in cooperative learning to 12 teachers at Sunny Junior High School two 
years before carrying out this study to examine the due effects of cooperative learning 
in EFL teaching. Among the 12 participants in the workshop, Ms. Lee was 
identified as the most successful teacher to implement cooperative learning. The 
reasons why the other 11 participants were not as successful as Ms. Lee remained a 
myth, which was in need of further investigation. What are the possible reasons for 
some teachers to become successful and frequent users of cooperative learning, some 

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infrequent users, and some even non-users at all—even after going through the same 
process of teacher development? Further research is, therefore, suggested to 
investigate the factors related to the success of teacher development in cooperative 
learning.

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