Developing cooperative learning in efl contents. Introduction

Practical significance of the research. The results and conclusion of this research can be applied in the sphere of methodology. It can be used at the lessons of different level students, in special courses on methodology, scientific articles, broadening students’ outlook and for the further investigation of the problems of acquiring a new language.
The structure of the research work. The research work consists of Introduction, 2 Chapters, Conclusion and references.
The introduction covers actuality, the aim, practical and theoretical significance, object and the subject, methods of research and the structure of the research. Chapter I. deals with theoretical part of the research while Chapter II of the work covers the elements, types, advantages of cooperative learning, the role of teacher and student in cooperative learning.
The results and recommendations of the research are given in conclusion. References indicate the scientific issues, articles and thesis that were used in doing research work.

CHAPTER I. THE CONCEPT OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING
1.1. Main peculiarities of cooperative learning
Cooperative learning (CL) involves pupils working together in small groups to accomplish shared goals. These are firstly interdependence, where members of the group perceive that they cannot succeed in a task unless everyone succeeds, and that every member has a vital role to play. The second key ingredient consists of ensuring the necessary conditions for cooperative learning to thrive. This is termed as promotive interaction, which occurs when individuals encourage each other to achieve group goals underpinned by interpersonal and small group skills.
Cooperative learning promotes academic achievement, is relatively easy to implement. Children's improved behavior and attendance, and increased liking of school, are some of the benefits of cooperative learning³ (Slavin, 1987).
Although much of the research on cooperative learning has been done with older students, cooperative learning strategies are effective with younger children in primary and secondary classrooms. In addition to the positive outcomes just noted, cooperative learning promotes student motivation, encourages group processes, fosters social and academic interaction among students, and rewards successful group participation.
When children begin to work on readiness tasks, cooperation can provide opportunities for sharing ideas, learning how others think and react to problems, and practicing oral language skills in small groups. Cooperative learning in early childhood can promote positive feelings toward school, teachers, and peers. These feelings build an important base for further success in school.
Encouraging cooperation between students is such a powerful means of increasing student motivation. Basically, cooperation is a definite `plus'. Studies from all over the world are unanimous in claiming that students in cooperative environments have more positive attitudes towards learning and develop higher self-esteem and self-confidence than in other classroom structures. Educational theory has even proposed a teaching approach, called cooperative learning, which is entirely built on the concept of peer collaboration, and this approach, according to Slavin has been `one of the greatest success stories in the history of educational
research'. In the L2 field, various forms of peer cooperation have become well-established techniques (e.g. small group activities or project work in the spirit of communicative language teaching), which is due to the fact that peer interaction is seen in modern language teaching methodologies as a prerequisite to building the learners' communicative competence.⁴
What are the reasons for the very favourable impact of cooperation on motivation? There are several:
- Cooperation fosters class group cohesiveness . When students work together they tend to like each other regardless of ethnic, cultural, class or ability differences. This is because in cooperative situations students are dependent on each other and share common goals, which in turn create a feeling of solidarity and comradely supportiveness.
. If learners are allowed to cooperate with each other towards a certain goal, their expectancy of success is likely to be higher than if they are to work individually because they know that they can also count on their peers. The cooperating team is a powerful resource pool.
- Cooperative team work achieves a rare synthesis of academic and social goals (which was argued in the previous section to be the ideal combination from a motivational perspective): it tends to be effective in terms of learning, and it also responds directly to the students' needs for belonging and relatedness.
- In cooperative situations there is a sense of obligation and moral responsibility to the `fellow-cooperators'. This means that peers are likely to pull each other along when motivation would be otherwise low. The joint responsibility also means that in such setups the likelihood of `free-riding' (i.e. doing very little while reaping the benefits of others' performance) decreases.
- Cooperation is also motivating because the knowledge that one's unique contribution is required for the group to succeed increases one's efforts. Cooperative situations generally have a positive emotional tone, which means that they generate less anxiety and stress than other learning formats.
- Cooperative teams are by defition autonomous (because they have to work a lot without the immediate supervision of the teacher), and autonomy is a powerful contributor to motivation . The satisfaction that students experience after they successfully complete a task together is increased by the shared experience and the joint celebration that usually follows.
- Cooperative situations increase the significance of effort relative to ability, because in team work the main characteristic people are judged by is their commitment to the team. This, in turn, promotes effort-based attributions, which will be a central issue of self-evaluation.
What are the key features of effective cooperative tasks? The following points are most often mentioned in teachers' accounts and research papers:

1. 
   Learners should work together in small groups of 3±6 members.
   
2. 
   Learning is structured in a way that group members are `positively
   

interdependent', that is, rely on each other to be able to complete the task. This can be achieved in several ways:

• 
  Learners work towards a single team product (e.g. joint performance).
  

- In addition to individual grades, some sort of team score is also calculated, and it is used to modify the individual scores (e.g. when a team has prepared together for a test which the students take individually, the individual test marks will be modified by taking into account the team's average score).
- Specific roles are assigned to every team member so that everybody has a specific responsibility (e.g. `explainer', `summariser' or `note-taker').
- Resources are either limited so that they need to be shared (e.g. one answer sheet per team) or they are such that they need to betted together (e.g. everybody receives a different section of an article).
- Certain class rules are set that emphasise team responsibility (e.g. no one can proceed to some new material before everybody else in the team has completed the previous assignment).
3. Learners should be given some advance training of group skills (e.g.
listening to each other; giving reasons in arguments; organising and coordinating the team's work) and they should be asked to react from time to time on how the cooperative work has gone and what could be improved. Increase student motivation by promoting cooperation among the learners. More specifically:

• 
  Set up tasks in which teams of learners are asked to work together towards the same goal.
  
• 
  Take into account team products and not just individual products in your assessment.
  

Provide students with some `social training' to learn how best to work in a team.
In short, cooperative learning, in contrast to teacher-fronted instruction, provides the possibility of a large increase in students' opportunities to create output, as many students are talking simultaneously, instead of one person, normally the teacher, doing all the talking (Long & Porter, 1985)<sup>5</sup>. In cooperative learning, group interaction is structured in an attempt to balance the opportunities that each student has for creating output. This contrasts with the situation often seen in group activities in which more student talk exists, but a relatively small group of students take most of the speaking turns. Groupworking is one which is `together'; in which there is a strong `we' feeling; and which students are happy to belong to. That is, cohesiveness refers to the members' commitment to the group and to each other. It is the `magnetism' or `glue' that holds the group together. Cohesiveness is often manifested by members seeking each other out, providing mutual support, and making each other welcome in the group.