Cooperative Learning: Context and Opportunities for Acquiring Academic English

Abstract

This article explores how the Learning Together form of cooperative learning influenced opportunities for acquiring academic English by L2 learners in a 6th-grade social studies classroom. Our findings present a complex picture. Cooperative learning gave L2 learners a wide range of opportunities to acquire academic English. They gave and received help with academic terms, difficult academic concepts, and para-academic knowledge. They were exposed to and produced lexical and conceptual explorations and homonymic word associations. They received help with conventions of written English. They used language for self-help and were invited by their peers to contribute more to the group. Many of these categories included both input and output opportunities, with L2 learners helping others as much as they were helped. However, except for help with decoding academic terms, the various kinds of opportunities occurred relatively infrequently. Moreover, there were some missed opportunities and some negative input. Several local contextual features (e.g., students' definitions of the task, features of the task, and participant structures) helped us understand the complex picture we found. Our findings suggest that (a) developers and disseminators need to take context into account, and (b) teachers who want to maximize the benefits of cooperative learning in support of second language acquisition (SLA) need to have a broad understanding of academic language, include SLA in their instructional goals, structure classroom tasks to support the desired opportunities for L2 learners, monitor what is happening in the groups, and fine tune their implementation if they are not getting what they want.

Psychological Processes in Cooperative Language Learning: Group Dynamics and Motivation

“…By now a fairly solid body of literature has accumulated, including two edited volumes containing a rich selection of conceptual and research studies (Holt, 1993;Kessler, 1992), a number of journal articles (e.g., Bejarano, 1987;Chang & Smith, 1991;Jacob, Rottenberg, Patrick, & Wheeler, 1996;Milleret, 1992;Szostek, 1994), as well as some practical language teaching materials specifically developed for the purpose of CL (e.g., Coelho, Winer, & Olsen, 1989). In addition, in her well-known book on small group work, Cohen (1994) devotes a whole chapter to discussing the bilingual classroom, which includes foreign language classes.…”

Issues of Cooperative Learning in ESL Classes: A Literature Review

“…The most frequent opportunity in their study involved L2 students giving or receiving help with decoding academic terms. Jacob et al's (1996) findings are supported by research in mainstream education. In his study of monolingual English-speaking students in the United Kingdom, Dowrick (1993) found that cooperative learning arrangements gave rise to 50% more low-order talk than high-order talk in a mathematics class.…”

“…Regarding students' L2 achievement gained through cooperative learning methods as reported in the studies reviewed above, one must ask the question: What type of language is acquired, academic or basic conversation? Jacob, Rottenberg, Patrick, and Wheeler's (1996) study is one of the few that explore L2 learners' acquisition of academic language in cooperative learning contexts. Their findings present a complex picture of the influence of the Learning Together method on opportunities for acquiring academic English in a grade 6 social studies class.…”

Literature Review of the Cooperative Learning Strategy – Student Team Achievement Division (STAD)

“…Third, the Cooperative Learning rationale requires teachers to assign students into different groups based on a various variables, such as their second language competence. Such individual difference might discomfort those students who have not yet mastered the second language, and thus, impede their collaboration with more capable students (Jacob, Rottenberg, Patrick & Wheeler, 1996). Jolliffe.…”