45 Express your opinion: What is cooperative learning? What are some of the most important benefits of cooperative learning?

Cooperative learning is an educational approach which aims to organize classroom activities into academic and social learning experiences. There is much more to Cooperative Learning than merely arranging students into groups, and it has been described as "structuring positive interdependence."^[1][2] Students must work in groups to complete tasks collectively toward academic goals. Unlike individual learning, which can be competitive in nature, students learning cooperatively can capitalize on one another’s resources and skills (asking one another for information, evaluating one another’s ideas, monitoring one another’s work, etc.).^[3][4] Furthermore, the teacher's role changes from giving information to facilitating students' learning.^[5][6] Everyone succeeds when the group succeeds. Ross and Smyth (1995) describe successful cooperative learning tasks as intellectually demanding, creative, open-ended, and involve higher order thinking tasks.^[7] Five essential elements are identified for the successful incorporation of cooperative learning in the classroom. Cooperative learning can also be contrasted with what it is not. Cooperation is not having students sit side-by-side at the same table to talk with each other as they do their individual assignments. Cooperation is not assigning a report to a group of students where one student does all the work and the others put their names on the product as well. Cooperation involves much more than being physically near other students, discussing material, helping, or sharing material with other students. There is a crucial difference between simply putting students into groups to learn and in structuring cooperative interdependence among students. 

How to Use Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning exercises can be as simple as a five minute in class exercise or as complex as a project which crosses class periods. These can be described more generally in terms of low, medium, and high faculty/student time investment.

Cooperative learning can be used across a wide range of classroom settings ranging from small to large lecture, as well as in online classes.

No matter what the setting is, properly designing and implementing cooperative learning involves five key steps. Following these steps is critical to ensuring that the five key elements that differentiate cooperative learning from simply putting students into groups are met.

46. Express your opinion on the theme: The notion of Intercultural Communicative Competence and its role in flt process.

Culture as an “integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviors of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations”.

Through the study of other languages, students gain a knowledge and understanding of the cultures that use that language; in fact, students cannot truly master the language until they have also mastered the cultural contexts in which the language occurs. Language learners need to be aware, for example, of the culturally appropriate ways to address people, express gratitude, make requests, and agree or disagree with someone. They should know that behaviors and intonation patterns that are appropriate in their own speech community may be perceived differently by members of the target language speech community. They have to understand that, in order for communication to be successful, language use must be associated with other culturally appropriate behavior. In many regards, culture is taught implicitly, imbedded in the linguistic forms that students are learning. To make students aware of the cultural features reflected in the language, teachers can make those cultural features an explicit topic of discussion in relation to the linguistic forms being studied. For example, when teaching subject pronouns and verbal inflections in French, a teacher could help students understand when in French it is appropriate to use an informal form of address (tu) rather than a formal form of address (vous)—a distinction that English does not have. An English as a second language teacher could help students understand socially appropriate communication, such as making requests that show respect; for example, “Hey you, come here” may be a linguistically correct request, but it is not a culturally appropriate way for a student to address a teacher. Students will master a language only when they learn both its linguistic and cultural norms.Foreign language teaching in the present day strives to promote an intercultural approach to language teaching in order to create an awareness of the interplay between language and culture. Among the most sought after languages are Japanese, Hindi, French and German followed by Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Italian and Russian. Albeit the teaching methodology adopted by each language may vary, the aim of all learners is to acquire competency in the target language in the shortest possible time. I think it is very effective way learning.

47. Express your opinion on the theme: Independent Work and its role in FLT process.

As is the case with many terms commonly used in higher education learning, such as ‘critical thinking’, ‘independent learning’ can mean different things to different people, in different disciplines and in different cultures. Therefore, it is important that this pivotal concept is explained to students so that they know what is required of them within their new context and discipline.

Philip Candy, in the now classic text ‘Self-direction for lifelong learning’ (1991, p 13), quotes Forster (1972, p ii) to define independent learning/study:

1. ‘Independent study is a process, a method and a philosophy of education: in which a student acquires knowledge by his or her own efforts and develops the ability for inquiry and critical evaluation;

2. it includes freedom of choice in determining those objectives, within the limits of a given project or program and with the aid of a faculty adviser;

3. it requires freedom of process to carry out the objectives;

4. it places increased educational responsibility on the student for the achieving of objectives and for the value of the goals’.

This definition clearly places the responsibility for learning in higher education on students, aided by teaching staff and defined by the limits and objectives of the programme.

Skills required for independent learning

The skills required for independent learning can be divided into cognitive skills, metacognitive skills and affective skills.

Cognitive skills include memory, attention and problem-solving. Pupils need to have reached a certain level in their cognitive development, such as being able to decode basic information before they can embark on independent learning. Teachers are able to promote this cognitive development to encourage independent learning.

Metacognitive skills are skills associated with an understanding of how learning occurs, such as pupils being able to state how they learn and pupils being able to identify other people who help them with their learning. Metacognitive skills are necessary for pupils to self-assess their learning.

Affective skills are skills that are related to feelings and emotions, such as developing a value system, then internalising and acting on these values. Motivation is considered the most important affective skill and is directly associated with increased independent learning and can also be an outcome of independent learning.

An important skill linking motivation to independent learning may be ‘delay of gratification’, which refers to someone’s ability to wait in order to obtain something that they want. Since motivation includes persistence in the face of difficulties and being willing to try again following initial difficulties, ‘delay of gratification’ may be important in order for motivation to be used for independent learning. There is lack of agreement in the literature concerning whether the skills necessary for independent learning are domain-specific or can be readily transferred across different subjects.