Using cooperative learning to teach comprehension skills to 1st year students at Faculty of Education in Zentan Universityt

Résumé

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of Cooperative Learning in teaching comprehension to the first year students of English department at faculty of Education in Zentan University. The study targeted the 1st year students who were familiar to method of read and repeat after the teacher in teaching reading comprehension. The impact of this method is reflected on the outcomes of the students because they dealt with reading without anyanalysis or reading between the lines which led to nemours challenge to reach the text orientation or the writer's intent. The methods that were used for data collection were direct observation and testing. The observation was conducted by the researcher during which the participants were observed on their behavior during reading lessons. The tests were held in interval periods. The first test took place at beginning of the study period as (pre) and the second one took place after the study period, ( post ). These two tests were meant to track the impact of cooperative learning and to support the observation.
The duration of the study was one month divided into two phases. At the first phase, the researcher applied traditional teaching methods in his lectures. Whereas ,cooperative learning took a place in the second phase. The tests’ scores were collected, compared and analyzed. The post test results indicated that cooperative learning had positive effects on the students' ability of understanding. During the observations, the researcher recorded field notes on students’ behavior during reading lessons and noticed that the cooperative learning strategies showed positive effects on the improvement of the participants on reading and comprehension. The participants in the experimental phase were able to create their own ways of thinking and showed a great deal of improvement in comprehending texts. It reflected that teaching reading comprehension by using Cooperative Learning method was effective.