COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Developed from the theories of Abraham Maslow and Paolo Freire and

inspired by the ideas of Lev Vygotsky and Andrew Wilkinson.

Abraham Maslow Paolo Freire Lev Vygotsky

Collaborative learning activity involves learners working together

in order to complete a task. Collaboration increases the

opportunities a student has to use the target language, and thereby

develop their skills in it.

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING PROJECT

Do you want to s t r e t c h

the minds of your

gifted and talented

students?

Do you want to extend the

range of teaching and

learning styles in your

classrooms?

Do you want to make

the curriculum more

accessible?

Do you want to

improve social

skills?

Employ teaching and learning strategies and collaborative activities in your

classroom and be an innovative teacher.

• Collaborative learning can create a student-centered situation in which the learners will feel more relaxed and ready to learn (Yang, 2009). Learners usually feel shy to speak in front of the whole class and therefore arrange the class in small groups in order to reduce their anxiety. Moreover, their intrinsic motivation, interpersonal skills and self-esteem will be improved through being engaged in group activities. Collaborative learning plays an essential role in second language acquisition (ibid). Design group works in order learners become involved in some collaborative activities and learn to use the different learning strategies.

Learning Strategies:Direct Strategies:

MemoryCognitive

Compensation

Indirect Strategies:Metacognitive

AffectiveSocial

Cognitive Strategy is a mental process

and when learning, it helps the selection of relevant information and rejection of irrelevant one. It relates to recognizing, comprehending, organizing materials, summarizing, repeating, translating, using formulas and patterns, problem solving and interacting in the target language (Cohen, cited in Schmitt 2010).

Memory strategy helps the learners to

store and retrieve information. Moreover, it is involved in semantic mapping, grouping,

representing sounds and images. (Oxford, 1992).

compensation strategy is

employed when learners need to continue the communication despite of the gap in their linguistic knowledge. It

helps them to make up the missing knowledge by adjusting the message, combining words or switching to the

mother tongue (ibid).

Metacognitive strategy involves in

thinking about the mental process that is engaged in the learning process. In addition, it controls and regulates the learning plans,

and decides how to learn effectively, monitors and then evaluates it (Richards &

Schmidt, 2010).

Being able to use affective strategy, learners can control the level

of anxiety, increase the motivation and positive thinking and improve their self-esteem. Affective strategy is involved in emotional, motivational, attitudinal, and

personal characteristic aspects of the learners (Wasilewska, 2012 & Oxford, 1992) .

Social strategy that is quite crucial

because languages are social phenomena and are learned to communicate with others. It is involved in interacting with the speakers of the target language in order to improve the

language, cooperating with peers and developing cultural understanding. In

addition, those who do pair-work and group-work in class make use of social strategy

(ibid).

Identifying language learning strategies seem to be a solution for Second Language Acquisition problems. Furthermore, language classrooms

ought to focus on both teaching and developing learning. Learners need to identify their own

language learning strategies according to their objectives. Moreover, teachers need to explore

what strategies the learners use for each objective. Teachers can try to train as autonomous learners as much as possible. Autonomous learners

are able to evaluate the practicality of a strategy critically. They can also choose the appropriate strategy for a task

and successfully transfer it to a new task (Chamot, 2004).

Some Important Collaborative Activities

Jigsaw readingImproves students’ motivation, affective, social and cognitive

strategies

Poster PresentationImproves students’ affective, social and cognitive strategies

Special method of writingStimulate students’ imagination and creativity

Ezat Amirbakzadeh KalatiMA TESOL

University of Bath, UK