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4

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CL: Cooperative Learning
CLL: Cooperative Language Learning
5

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1: Students’ on-task behavior
Table 2: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 1
Table 3: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 2
Table 4: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 3
Table 5: Students’ on-task behavior – Group 4
Table 6: The most common categories of students’ interactions before and during the CL
activities



TABLE OF CONTENT
CANDIDATE’S STATEMENT 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2
ABSTRACT 3
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 4
LIST OF TABLES 5
PART 1: INTRODUCTION 8
1 A review of related researches 8
2 Rationale 10
3 Objectives of the study 11
4 Research questions 11
5 Significance of the study 11
6 Scope of the study 11

7 Methods of the study 12
8 Organization of the study 12
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT 13
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 13
1.1 Cooperative Learning 13
1.1.1 Definitions of cooperative learning 13
1.1.2 Principles of cooperative learning 14
1.2 Cooperative language learning (CLL) 17
1.2.1 Goals of CLL 17
1.2.2 Advantages of CLL 18
1.2.3 Design of CLL 18
1.3 Speaking skill 20
1.3.1 Nature of speaking 20
1.3.2 Classroom speaking performance 21
1.3.3 Speaking activities 22
CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH 24
2.1 Research methods 24
2.1.1 Subjects of the research 24



2.1.2 Procedure of the research 24
2.1.3 Instrumentation and data collection 27
2.2 Data Analysis 28
2.2.1 Data analysis procedure 28
2.2.2 Data analysis results 29
2.3 Discussion of the research questions 36
2.3.1 What are the effects of CL on students’ participation in the group
activities? 36
2.3.2 What are the students’ attitudes towards CL? 38

CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATIONS 40
3.1 The CL training and implementation plan 40
3.2 Dealing with the problems of CL application 42
3.3 Teachers’ awareness of their roles in CL lessons 42
PART 3: CONCLUSION 44
1. The achievement of the objectives of the study 44
2. The effectiveness of the methods and instruments used 44
3. Limitations of the study 45
4. Suggestions for further studies 46
REFERENCES 47
APPENDICES Error! Bookmark not defined VII





PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1 A review of related researches
Cooperative Learning (CL) has interested thousands of researchers all over the world as
one of the educational innovations which has the best and largest empirical base. With a
view to realizing its effectiveness in encouraging the students to speak in class, the
researcher has set herself two tasks for a review of literature: finding out the benefits of CL
and how well it has been integrated in English speaking lessons.
a) Benefits of cooperative learning
The benefits of cooperative learning have been proved by researchers. Many of researches
have come to generally positive conclusions about its academic benefits in that cooperative
learning has been shown to help improve student’s learning and re-vitalize teaching
methods (Johnson, Johnson & Stanne, 2000). Researchers have also concluded that
students who learn in groups develop intercultural understanding (Slavin, 1990),
interpersonal skills (Johnson & Johnson, 2000), and that they are better prepared for the

modern participative workplace (Feichtner & Davis, 1991). Cooperative learning is also
seen as essential preparation for participating in a democratic society. (Kagan, 1994).
In comparison with competitive and individualistic approaches, cooperative learning has
been proved to be more effective instructional method (Johnson et al., 2000). To be more
specific, apart from better academic outcomes, cooperative learning has been demonstrated
to benefit students from developing critical thinking skills (Brandon & Hollingshead,
1999), developing creative thinking ability (Johnson et al.,1994) and enhancing social
skills such as communication, presentation, problem-solving, leadership, delegation and
organization (Cheng & Warren, 2000). According to Slavin, cooperative learning also
helps solve teachers’ instructional problems.
However, Slavin (1995) notices that cooperative learning only benefits students when
cooperative learning strategies are held properly; Otherwise, they would decrease students’
academic achievement. Other researchers also realize the importance of CL strategies in
designing and carrying out CL activities successfully. Some of them will be discussed in
the next part, which provides a basic theoretical background for the study.



b) CL in teaching speaking skill
With regard to teaching an EFL speaking course in the world, few researches have been
found on the implementation of CL in developing students’ speaking ability. Tamaela, J.
C. (2009) examines the effects of CL activities in teaching speaking skill to an SMA
Negeri 1 class in Malang, Indonesia. She comes to a conclusion that CL enables the
students to participate to work as a team and when working in CL groups, students are
supported to speak up. Galit, D. (2006) confirms that the combination of CL and authentic
materials promotes speaking in small groups in an EFL class.
In Vietnam, the implementation of CL in teaching speaking skill has recently interested
teachers and researchers. Hoang Thi Lan (2005) applied CL to develop speaking skill of
the first year EFL students at Vinh University, and Le Thi Bich Thuy (2006) carried out an
action using CL with her second-year students at Gia Lai Teacher Training College. These

studies have proven the effectiveness of CL in improving students’ speaking ability.
Regarding the situation of Vietnamese high schools where CL has been recently applied,
the results from a research done by Phi Thanh Tra (2006) show that although CL has been
employed with a view to improving students’ speaking competence, it is quite simple in
terms of groups and activities and the teachers have not explored and applied all aspects of
CL. That leads to a fact that the students have not been motivated to put it in action even
though they have realized the advantages of CL in speaking lessons. Therefore, in order to
have a successful CL lesson, teachers play a very important role. Pham Thi Hong Thanh
(2008) examined perceptions of the respective roles and responsibilities of Vietnamese
teachers as one of the constraints against cooperative learning. She argues that cooperative
learning has failed to replace the traditional teaching and learning approach at Vietnamese
higher education institutions partly because Vietnamese teachers are not happy to transfer
their roles as a knowledge transmitter to a learning facilitator as cooperative learning
requires.
Despite the growing interest of teachers and researchers in CL, few articles or studies have
been especially devoted to enhancing students’ participation in a speaking lesson. The
researcher, therefore, has made up her mind to examine how CL group activities may help
to enhance the students’ participation in her own teaching context.



2 Rationale
The very first reason why the researcher carries out the study on group work comes from
her own teaching experience. During the three years’ working as a teacher of the speaking
skill for the English majors, the researcher has failed to organize students to work
effectively in groups. Having realized the advantages group work may have on students’
learning, the researcher has tried to put the students in groups and tell them to cooperate;
however, it has not worked so far. A very common problem is that there is usually low
participation among the students during the speaking lessons; meanwhile, whenever
working in groups, some members always assert their dominance over others in any group

activity. This is due to the fact that students at Thành Đô University, a very new private
one, have mixed levels of speaking abilities, and they have little chance to use the
language. Many of them are shy to speak out during the speaking activities, and thus, the
better ones speak a lot while the weaker say little or nothing at all. In search of a better
strategy of structuring group work, the researcher happened to read some books and
articles about cooperative learning and the implementation of its principles in structuring
groups to improve students’ learning. The researcher has found that simply putting
students in groups does not mean cooperation will occur, and that how teachers organize
group work affects students’ participation in group activities.
With an interest in CL and a hope to apply it to enhance the students’ participation in
speaking classes, a deeper review of literature has been made by the researcher. The above
review of hundreds of researches on CL and its effectiveness in improving students’
learning in general and speaking skill in particular has given the researcher good reasons to
take CL into implementation. The success of CL programmes by many teachers in the
world and in Vietnam has encouraged the researcher to carry out such a programme in her
class. Moreover, though a lot of CL implementing programmes have been carried out, few
have been particularly done for an increase in students’ participation in speaking activities.
For all these reasons, the researcher would really like to do a research on “Using
cooperative learning principles in structuring groups to enhance participation in speaking
lessons of second-year college students of English at Thanh Do University”.



3 Objectives of the study
In realizing the study, the main objectives are:
 To investigate the effects of CL on students’ participation in oral activities
 To examine the students’ attitude towards the new way of learning speaking skill
4 Research questions
With those aims, my research questions along with sub-questions are:
1) What are the effects of CL on students’ participation in the group activities?

 Are the students motivated to participate?
 Is the amount of the students’ participation increased and divided equally?
 Is the nature of the students’ participation improved?
2) What are the student’s attitudes towards CL?
5 Significance of the study
The study is conducted to prove the hypothesis that CL may help to enhance students’
participation in speaking classes. The first and foremost aim, therefore, is for the sake of
the students. Besides, it is hoped that the study will help to better the researcher’s own
teaching of the English speaking skill, and also to serve as a source of reference for the
colleagues at Thanh Do University and those who are concerned with CL.
6 Scope of the study
Within the scope of an individual teacher research, the researcher has no ambition to cover
all aspects of CL and all the students as well. The study is only focused on the
effectiveness of CL in improving the participation in speaking lessons of the second year
students of the Foreign Language Department at Thanh Do University. The subjects are 21
second year college students of the Department. The activities are selected and designed
from the main course book “React & Interact” by Byrd D.R.H& Clemente I.C – Longman
as well as the CL structures proposed by Dr. Spencer Kagan (Kagan online). The data
collection and analysis are based on classroom observation, the journals written by the
students and informal interviews carried out during the first semester from September 2009



to January 2010. As this is an individual teacher research, the researcher is responsible for
all the data collection and analysis. She gets assistance from a colleague at the Department
with the class observation.
7 Methods of the study
The researcher employs both quantitative and qualitative methods to get the most realistic
and reliable panorama of the teaching action. Quantitative analysis is involved in the
process of data collection and analysis via the information provided by the two observation

forms. Meanwhile, qualitative analysis is employed to get an insight into the subjects of the
study (their learning attitudes, the improvement of participation and oral communication
skills developed) through their journals, the informal talks and the observation sheets as
well. Hopefully, the study will yield beneficial results for the teaching and learning of
speaking skill in the future.
8 Organization of the study
The study is divided into three main parts. The following shows the content covered in
each part:
Part A is the Introduction. It presents a review of related researches, explains the rationale
of the study, the objectives, the research questions, scope and significance as well as the
methods and organization of the study.
Part B is the Development of the study and is comprised of three chapters. Chapter 1
presents the necessary theoretical background to the study. Chapter 2 describes the process
of carrying out the study, including collecting data, analyzing data, drawing findings and
discussing research questions. Chapter 3 provides some pedagogical implications and
suggestions for further studies.
Part C is the Conclusion of the study.



PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
1 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 Cooperative Learning
1.1.1 Definitions of cooperative learning
Over the past twenty years, different approaches to cooperative learning have been
developed by different individuals. Therefore, CL takes various forms and definitions.
Following are some of the definitions by the most famous scholars:
Dr. Spencer Kargan (1994) proposes a definition on CL as “group learning activity
organized so that learning is dependent on socially structured exchange of information
between learners in group and in which each learner is held accountable for his or her own

learning and is motivated to increase learning of others.” Jacobs (1997) generalizes ideas
emerged now and then in a definition that captures the spirit of CL. According to him, CL
is a body of concepts and techniques for helping to maximize the benefits of cooperation
among students in education. In other words, CL provides language teachers with essential
concepts of heterogeneous classes, learner cooperation and mutual help in learning; and it
equips teachers with effective instructional techniques to exploit cooperation in language
learning classes.
In his recent definition, Johnson (2001) defines CL as a general term for an instructional
approach that “emphasizes the conceptual learning and the development of social skills as
learners work together in small heterogeneous groups.” The idea of CL is described in a
very simple way like this: class members are organized in small groups after receiving
instructions from the teacher; they then work through the assignment until all the group
members successfully understand and complete it. All their cooperative efforts help to
strive for mutual benefit so that all group members gain from each other’s efforts,
recognizing that they all share a common fate…No on group member possesses all the
information, skills or resources needed for the highest possible quality result.
Although stated variously, definitions of CL basically falls into three major points: Firstly,
CL is said to be a strategy where students work together in small learning group, helping
each other to accomplish individual and group tasks. CL encourages responsibility among



groupmates as each member is not only in charge of his own learning but also of other
teammates’ learning. Secondly, CL is recognized as a method of instruction that promotes
the learner’s development of high-order levels of thinking, essential communication skills,
improved motivation, positive self-esteem, social awareness, and tolerance for individual
differences in group activities. This characteristic differentiates CL from its ancestor
named Group work. Group work has students work in groups to do tasks. There may exist
uneven participation of group members as one or two better students may dominate the
work while CL strains interdependence and individual accountability among learners in

group, which helps to stick students to the mutual work. Lastly, the CL process also helps
to build students’ understanding of a few concepts maintaining. Content-based tasks
designed in the light of CL give learners, especially the lower level ones, opportunities to
raise the voice confidently with their reservoir of world knowledge.
In general, we can simply understand that cooperative learning is referred to as any variety
of teaching methods in which students work in small groups to help one another learn
academic content. As there have been different views on CL, various principles have been
put forward in the CL literature. Eight guiding CL principles as long with how they can
inform teaching practice will be discussed in the next section.
1.1.2 Principles of cooperative learning
a) Heterogeneous grouping
CL groups in which students do CL tasks are the mixed clusters of students with on or
some variables including sex, religion, ethnicity, personality, age, social class, language
proficiency and diligence. Heterogeneous grouping is believed to have a number of
benefits in comparison with homogeneous grouping, such as making peer-tutoring more
likely to happen, providing a variety of perspectives or helping students get to know and
learn tolerance to others’ differences.
In order to achieve heterogeneous groups for speaking activities, teachers may want to look
at their class and make conscious decisions about such things as which students should
work together, and how different the levels of students in groups should be, rather than
leaving the matter to chance or to students’ choice.



Choosing suitable group size is also an important factor to conduct group work effectively.
Chen (2004) suggests that groups of three or four likely work best; sometimes larger
group, of from five to ten, are expected to give good results in big tasks where enormous
human resource and the variety of people in terms of skills, background knowledge, etc.
are required.
b) Collaborative skills

Collaborative skills are those interpersonal and cooperative abilities students need to work
with others effectively. Most books on collaborative skills suggest that they be explicitly
taught one at a time, however, which to teach depends on particular students and tasks that
the skill instruction intends to be combined in. Some of the many skills important to
successful collaboration are: checking that others understand, asking for and giving
reasons, disagreeing politely and responding politely to disagreement and encouraging
others to participate and responding to encouragement to participate.
c) Group autonomy
This principle encourages students to look to themselves for resources rather than relying
solely on the teacher. Roger Johnson writes in his article: “Teachers must trust peer
interaction to do many of the things they have felt responsible for themselves.” When
student working groups are in difficulty, teachers must resist their temptation to help, let
them try helping themselves. Teachers may sometimes intervene, but intervention should
not always be the first option.
d) Simultaneous interaction (Kagan, 1994)
In traditional classroom, where no group activities are used, the normal interaction pattern
is like this: one person speaks at a time – usually the teacher, and occasionally a student
who is called to answer a question or so. This sequential structure is seriously disastrous in
communicative language classes as they leave too little time per student for active
participation. In contrast, the use of small group work gives learners room to learn actively
and engage to the negotiation of meaning with others. The smaller the size of groups is, the
more students will speak at the same time. This CL principle is called Simultaneous
Interaction.



Even when groups are used, it is common at the end of a group activity for teachers to
bring groups together as the whole class; then it might be the time for group report done by
group representatives, for teacher’s evaluation of the group work and teacher’s revision of
the main points discussed. When this takes place, we are back to sequential interaction.

Thus, scholars urge that successful practical education in CL classes require teachers to
combine simultaneous and sequential interaction in a flexible way.
e) Equal participation
Researchers affirm that students learn by interacting with the content and with fellow
students, and participation is an essential ingredient for student success, and equal
participation is an essential ingredient for the success of all students. But a frequent
problem in groups is that one or two group members dominate the group and, for what
reason, impede the participation of others. CL offers many ways of promoting equal
participation in groups, such as assigning and rotating roles among group members – they
take turn to be facilitator, checker, questioner, encourager …; and using multiple ability
tasks (Cohen, 1994), i.e. the tasks that require a range of abilities, such as drawing, acting,
singing, rather than only language abilities.
f) Individual accountability
Individual accountability is said to be the flip side of equal participation, since it is hard to
maintain equal participation in groups if there is no Individual accountability among group
members. When we encourage equal participation in groups, we try to make everyone feel
that they have opportunities to take part in group work. The Individual accountability
principle helps to avoid problems in group work such as sleeping partners, social loafing or
hanging around.
Techniques for encouraging Individual accountability include giving each group member a
designated turn to participate in small-sized groups, calling on students at random to share
their group’s ideas to check the group work and having a task to be done individually at the
end of the group activity. In an open, friendly accommodating atmosphere with a number
of fellow classmates, learners are found more accountable for their learning and group
common tasks.



g) Positive interdependence
This principle lies at the heart of CL theory. When Positive interdependence exists among

group members, they feel that they are helping themselves by helping others, and that what
hurts one member of the group hurts the other members. It is the “All for one, one for all”
feeling that keeps the members staying on group tasks and creates the wish to help each
other to share a common goal.
Johnson & Johnson (1998) suggest nine things teachers should establish to promote
Positive interdependence. Six of them are: (1) A group mutual goal to achieve; (2) A warm
and friendly environment; (3) Assigned roles to group members as leader, reporter, time
reminder, etc; (4) Shared resources; (5) External challenges (e.g: references, websites) for
long-staying groups to improve group dynamics; and (6) Joint rewards.
In order to encourage Positive interdependence in groups, teachers should give careful
thought before putting students in groups. If they cannot do this, there possibly occurs no
interdependence or negative interdependence among group members instead of the desired
positive one.
h) Cooperation as a value
This principle means that rather than cooperation being only a way to learn – the “how” of
learning, it also becomes part of the content to be learned – the “what” of learning. While
doing language tasks, students get to know the concept of cooperation and the organization
of group work themselves.
We have just looked at the definitions and some major principles of CL. In the next
section, the theory of CL in second language learning and teaching will be presented. This
will serve as a reference for us in the implementation of CL in teaching speaking skill.
1.2 Cooperative language learning (CLL)
1.2.1 Goals of CLL
In second language teaching, CL is seen as a way of promoting communicative interaction
in the classroom, thus it is considered to be an extension of the principles of
communicative language teaching.



Richards and Rodgers (2001) propose five goals of cooperative learning in language

teaching: (a) to provide opportunities for naturalistic second language acquisition through
the use of interactive pair and group activities; (b) to provide teachers with a methodology
to enable them to achieve this goal which can be applied in a variety of curriculum
settings; (c) to provide opportunities for learners to develop successful learning and
communication strategies; (d) to enhance learners’ motivation and reduce learners’ stress
and to create a positive affective classroom climate; (e) to enable focused attention to
particular lexical items, language structures, and communicative functions through the use
of interactive task.
1.2.2 Advantages of CLL
From the perspective of second language teaching, CLL offers six learning advantages for
ESL students: (a) Increase frequency and variety of second language practice through
different types of interaction; (b) Opportunities to integrate language with content-based
instruction; (c) Possibility for development or use of language in ways that support
cognitive development and increase language skills; (d) Opportunities to include a greater
variety of curricular materials to stimulate language as well as concept learning; (e)
Freedom for teachers to master professional skills, particularly those which emphasize
communication; (f) Opportunities for students to act as resources for each other, thus
assuming a more active role in learning
1.2.3 Design of CLL
When implementing CLL, the teacher needs to take into account a number of issues. The
following issues are commonly discussed by researchers:
a) Objectives
The overall objectives of CLL are: to foster cooperation rather than competition, to
develop critical thinking, and to develop communicative competence through socially
structured interaction activities. More specific objectives will derive from the context in
which they are used.

b) The syllabus
As CL can be used to teach activities from a variety of curriculum orientations, CLL does
not have any particular form of language syllabus. We can find CLL used in teaching
content classes, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, ESP and the four skills.
c) Roles of the teacher
Teacher’s role in CLL is considerably different from that in traditional lessons. A very
important role of the teacher in CLL classroom is that of facilitator of learning. As a
facilitator, the teacher has to move around the class helping the students and groups as
needs arise. Other things the teacher must do are: creating a highly structured and well-
organized learning environment in the classroom, setting goals, planning and structuring
tasks, establishing the physical arrangements of the classroom, assigning students to
groups and roles, and selecting materials and time.
d) Roles of the learner
The primary role of the learner is as a member of a group who must work collaboratively
on tasks with other group members. Therefore, learners have to learn teamwork skills.
They are also directors of their own learning. They are taught to plan, monitor, and
evaluate their own learning. CLL requires their direct and active involvement and
participation. Pair grouping is the most typical CLL format, ensuring the maximum amount
of time both learners spend on learning tasks.
e) Learning and teaching activities
Types of learning and teaching activities are of great importance to the design of CLL.
Three main ones the teacher may use are:
 Formal cooperative learning groups: these activities are used for specific tasks and
involve students working together to achieve shared learning goals. These may last
from one period to several weeks.
 Informal cooperative learning groups: this type of activities just lasts a few minutes
or a class period, and is used to focus students’ attention or to facilitate learning
during direct teaching.

 Cooperative base groups: activities of this type consist of heterogeneous groups
with stable membership. The main purpose of these activities is to allow group
members to give each other support, encouragement needed to be academically
successful. These are long term, lasting for at least one semester or a year.
f) Role of instructional materials
Materials play an important part in creating opportunities for students to work
cooperatively. CLL does not require a different material from other types of lessons, but
variations in the way the materials are used are a must. Materials may be especially
designed for CLL lessons, modified from existing materials, or borrowed from other
disciplines.
1.3 Speaking skill
1.3.1 Nature of speaking
According to Brown and Yule (1993), spoken language consists of short, often
fragmentary utterances, in a range of pronunciations. There is often a great deal of
repetition and overlap between one speaker and another, and speakers frequently use non-
specific references (e.g. “it”, “thing”, “this”, “that”…). In spoken language, the use of non-
specific words and phrases, the loosely organized syntax and the use of fillers such as
“well”, “u huh” or “oh” make it less conceptually dense than other types of language.
The two authors propose a basic distinction when considering the development of speaking
skill is between monologue and dialogue. The ability to give an uninterrupted oral
presentation is quite distinct from interacting with one or more speakers for transactional
and interactional purposes, the two basic language functions. They suggest that most
language teaching is concerned with developing skills in short, interactional exchanges in
which the learner is only required to make one or two utterances at a time. They also state
that “students who are only capable of producing short turns are going to experience a lot
of frustration when try to speak foreign language” since the ability to express on a given
subject to a group of listeners is a skill that has to be learned and practiced.
Littlewood (1992) also examined the nature of spoken language. He is mostly concerned

with the lack of transfer from the practice of motor-perceptive skills to genuine



communicative interaction. He points out that successful oral communication involves the
development of: (a) The ability to articulate phonological features of the language
comprehensibly; (b) Mastery of stress, rhythm, intonation patterns; (c) An acceptable
degree of fluency; (d) Transactional and interpersonal skills; (e) Skills in taking short and
long speaking turns; (f) Skills in management of interaction; (g) Skills in negotiating
meaning; (h) Conventional listening skills; (i) Skills in knowing about and negotiating
purposes for conversations; and (j) Using appropriate conversational formulae and fillers.
1.3.2 Classroom speaking performance
Brown (1994) proposes six categories applied to the kinds of oral production that students
are expected to carry out in the classroom:
a) Imitative takes a very limited portion of classroom speaking time when learners are
practicing an intonation contour or trying to pinpoint a certain vowel sound, etc.
b) Intensive includes any speaking performance that is designed to practice some
phonological or grammatical aspect of language.
c) Responsive is short replies to teachers or students initiated questions or comments.
These replies are usually sufficient and do not extend into dialogues.
d) Transactional (dialogue) is carried out for the purpose of conveying or exchanging
specific information.
e) Interpersonal (dialogue) is carried out more for the purpose of maintaining social
relationships than for the transmission of facts and information.
f) Extensive (monologue): students at intermediate or advanced levels are called on to
give extended monologue in the form of oral reports, summaries, or perhaps short
speeches.
These above six categories of Brown are highly valuable in offering a guide in working out
the types of classroom speaking performance. The teachers should consider these points
when teaching speaking skill. He also points out the following characteristics of spoken

language that can make oral performance difficult:



a) Clustering: speakers have to select from their store of language clustering, that is
groups of words, not word by word, in order to speak fluently.
b) Reduced forms: such reduced forms as contractions, reduced vowels, elisions, etc
often create difficulties for both teachers and learners of spoken English.
c) Stress, rhythm and intonation: learners of English often find it difficult to
pronounce English words, to stress the right syllables, to follow the stress-timed
rhythm and intonation patterns of spoken English.
d) Colloquial language: learners sometimes find it difficult to understand and produce
words, idioms and phrases of colloquial language if they are only exposed to
standard English or “textbook” language.
e) Affective factors: learners learning to speak often encounter the risk of saying out
things that may be wrong or stupid. At those times, they tend to be anxious as they
do not want to be judged by other learners or the teacher.
f) Interaction: this is the greatest difficulty learners face in their learning to speak.
Engaged in process of negotiating meaning with many discourse constraints, learners
have to do the complex task of choosing what to say, how to say, or when to speak…
1.3.3 Speaking activities
Classroom activities that develop learners’ ability to express themselves through speech
are an important component of a language course when CLT is applied. Many researchers
have discussed classroom activities and a lot of activities are designed based on the theory
and characteristics of CLT.
Richards and Rodgers (1996) discuss that the range of exercise types and activities with a
communicative approach is unlimited, provided that such exercises and activities enable
learners to attain the communicative objectives of the curriculum, engage learners in
communication and require the use of such communicative processes as information
sharing, negotiation of meaning, and interaction. In their view, classroom activities should

be designed to focus on completing tasks that are mediated through language of involve
negotiation of information and information sharing.



Teachers, therefore, should know how to adopt appropriate speaking activities which can
help learners develop their speaking skills. However, it is not easy for teachers to design
and administer such activities. Ur (1996) lists out four main problems teachers often come
across. They may come across some problems such as: students have nothing to say; they
are inhibited to speak in class; they use their mother tongue instead of the target language
and their participation is uneven or low.
Overcoming these problems to create a successful speaking activity where learners talk a
lot, participation is even, motivation is high certainly requires a lot of teachers’ efforts.
Under the CL conditions, students’ cooperative efforts are expected to be more productive
than competitive individual efforts. Moreover, working in CL environment with the group-
goal structures and self-esteem building strategies, the students are not only well-structured
to participate equally and trained collaborative skills which are helpful in learning but also
encouraged and motivated to strive to strengthen themselves and their friends. Therefore, it
can be said that CL and CLL are very likely to be effective in solving the problems of
speaking activities.
Summary
The chapter has so far presented the basic theoretical background for the study. The main
issues including the theory of cooperative learning in general and cooperative language
learning in particular, the teaching and learning of speaking skill have all been discussed.
Basing on this review and having realized the advantages of CL and CLL, an action
research on implementing CL structures to enhance students’ participation in speaking
activities will be carried out. The thorough research will be presented in the next chapter.

2 CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL RESEARCH
2.1 Research methods
2.1.1 Subjects of the research
The action research is carried out in a class of 21 second- year college students at the age
of 18 to 20, 4 boys and 17 girls. Their English proficiency level is pre-intermediate, but
they are at mixed levels of speaking competence. About 7 of them (almost from Hanoi and
other cities) are rather good at speaking; they are very active, talkative and usually
dominant in speaking lessons. 8 can be said to be at the average; they are relatively
involved in class activities. The rest (6) are usually passive and quiet; they seem to keep
silent during any speaking activity and even to be scared when asked to speak. The class
has one speaking lesson (3 periods each) a week and they use “React & Interact” by Byrd
D.R.H& Clemente I.C – Longman as their textbook.
2.1.2 Procedure of the research
Following is the procedure of the action research, which strictly follows the 7 steps
proposed by Nunan (1992):
Step 1: Problem Identification
Since starting teaching at Thanh Do University, the teacher has taught speaking skills
many times, and has always been trying to motivate the students to speak out in class.
However, after two semesters working with the class, a frustrating problem was identified,
that is, there was low and unequal participation among the students. That urged the teacher
to find a better way to work with the class.
Step 2: Preliminary Investigation
In this stage, the teacher spent time talking with the students about the teaching and
learning of speaking: the teaching and learning methods, what the students desire to be
able to do in speaking lessons, especially in group activities. The students were encouraged
to talk about the problems they encounter when working in groups. Through continuous
classroom interaction, the teacher realized that low and uneven participation was what

most of them wanted to change. Some suggested solutions were then discussed, and the
teacher had chance to introduce CL.
After the problem was discussed, some classroom observation was carried out by the
teacher herself and another teacher of speaking skill, who has five-year teaching
experience. The frequency of students’ participation in these ordinary instructional
activities was recorded. That helped to get an insight into the problem. The observation
results would also be used for analysis to see the changes in the students’ participation
before and after the action.
Step 3: Hypotheses
Through the discussion with the students and the classroom observation, some reasons for
the low and unequal participation of the students have been found such as the activities are
not very interesting or effective; some students find speaking activities difficult and
gradually become de-motivated; meanwhile, the good students have to be responsible for
most of group work and do not know how to help their friends to speak with them.
The hypothesis for the study was then formed basing on the initial data collected: applying
CL principles in structuring groupwork may increase students’ participation in speaking
lessons.
The teacher then set up the research questions to be answered later, and started a review of
literature to set up a basic theoretical background for the study.
Step 4: Intervention
To solve the problem, the teacher decided to use CL principles in structuring groups for her
speaking lessons. This step of intervention was carried out as follows:
1. Group organization
Two factors were taken into account: the students’ personal qualities such as strengths and
weaknesses or personality; and their speaking test scores of the first two semesters. Based
on the teacher’s understanding of the students’ intelligence, together with the information
collected from some friendly talks with them as well as their speaking test results, students
were put into mixed ability and intelligence groups, and they would work with one another

for the whole semester. The students were also given a card with a code number used for
observation.
2. CL introduction and training
Firstly, the teacher made the students aware of CL theory such as its definitions, principles
and benefits via explicit explanations, some simple tasks and activities structured along CL
principles. Then, the collaborative skills needed for CL group work were trained. The
teacher designed some simple activities basing on familiar and interesting topics for the
students to work on. Before the training, a list of essential collaborative skills was
delivered to students (assigning roles, choosing leaders, listening, questioning, etc). During
the group discussion, the teacher also joined the groups and gave them clarification or
examples needed.
3. Implementing CL structured activities
Basing on the course book for the semester, all the speaking activities were designed using
CL structures. A common goal was set and the criteria for assessment (e.g. marks would be
given according to their individual contribution and participation…) were informed so that
the students were aware of the responsibility they would take for their individual
achievement and for the group’s goal as well. Instructions were also given to students
before and during each activity to ensure that they thoroughly understood what to do and
how.
Step 5: Evaluation
To see the effects of CL on students’ participation, observation was done during each
activity, informal interviews were carried out after each lesson and journals were to be
written at home with some prompts given (see Appendix).
Then, data collected from these sources were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The
frequency and distribution of students’ participation during the activity was calculated and
demonstrated in tables. A lot of information on the students’ attitudes towards CL, their
nature of participation and improvement of oral communications skills was also worked
out. The data analysis results were then used to discuss the research questions.

Step 6: Dissemination
The researcher had chance to share her new experience with some colleagues after the
course. The action research was hoped to be introduced to other teachers during the M.A
thesis defensive presentation.
Step 7: Follow-up
In this final step, some lessons were drawn out and suggestions for better application were
introduced.
2.1.3 Instrumentation and data collection
In order to get the empirical data for the study, three instruments were used, that is,
observations sheets, students’ journals and informal interviews with students. And as
mentioned above, all the data collection was carried out during the first semester of the
second year.
The first instrument for collecting data is observation sheets. Observation is a main tool to
collect data for the study as it is a good method to do an action research (Wallace, 1998),
and a mainstay of action research, which enables researcher to document and reflect
systematically upon classroom interactions and events as they actually occur rather than as
the teachers think they occur. There are two sets of observation forms uses in the study.
The first one is adapted from Peacock (1997). It focuses on students’ on-task behavior to
measure students’ participation and persistence with the group activities. The second
observation sheet, on the other hand, consists of a series of interaction categories aiming to
record the nature of students’ participation during CL structured activities. It is adapted
from The Postgraduate Research Handbook by Gina Wisker, 2001. The observation was
done before and during the action by the researcher and one of her colleague at the
Department.
The second instrument is the students’ journals, which were written every week after
speaking lessons. Journal writing was chosen because previous researches suggested that
as a reflective tool, journals may offer a personal writing place where students may reflect

on their own learning experience, describe their feelings and reactions to the class
activities and express their thoughts about the new way of learning. For this study,



journals were structured to focus on the issues related to the research questions, and
therefore, give the researcher information on students’ reflection on the CL activities done
in class. The students were told to be able to freely express their feelings, their opinions
and attitudes towards the lessons since their journals would not be marked. This has been
done to make sure that the research will be provided with reliable qualitative data.
The last instrument is the informal interviews with the students. It is noted that these
interviews were carried out before, during and after the action. Throughout the
experimental teaching, the researcher conducted informal talks with the students during the
class breaks and right after the end of each lesson.
After all the data have been collected, they are quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed.
The whole data analysis procedure and all the results will be thoroughly presented in the
next section.
2.2 Data Analysis
2.2.1 Data analysis procedure
The data collected from the first observation sheet were used for the quantitative analysis.
As mentioned above, these data are useful sources to discover the frequency of students’
participation in every activity. The data from the second observation schedules, the
students’ journals as well as the interviews were used to do the qualitative analysis, which
is normally of great importance to an action research. These sources of data reflect the
skills that students have improved and their attitudes towards CL activities.
Firstly, to see the changes in the quantity and quality of students’ participation before and
after the experimental teaching, observation forms of 6 activities were collected; the
frequencies and nature of each student’s participation were counted and marked. All the
features and numbers were then presented in tables.
Then, the students’ reflection on CL structured activities basing on the journals and

interviews was read and categorized carefully to focus on the issues related to the research
questions such as: their participation, oral communication skills improved and their
attitudes towards CL. Throughout the whole semester, the researcher collected students’