Collaboration in EFL Classes: Listening to Teachers' and Students' Voices

DOI

10.2991/icei-17.2018.49How to use a DOI?

Keywords

collaborative learning; ELF classes

Abstract

The 21st century learning is characterized by the 4Cs: Collabora-tion, Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Communication. Peda-gogical practices, therefore, should accommodate interactions and active thinking among students. Putting students into groups is one strategy that can be expected to encourage collaborative learning, communication, as well as high order thinking skills. This study aims at describing how groupings are planned and implemented by EFL teachers in junior high schools in Bali. The study followed a descriptive qualitative research paradigm in-volving 8 English teachers from 4 public schools and 154 stu-dents of Grade 8. The data were collected through classroom ob-servation, document study, questionnaire, and interview. The study found that among the range of grouping formats, EFL teachers showed monotonous grouping strategies that involve students to work on a task. Most of the strategies are spontane-ously assigned to students as the lesson flows. Only 41.9% of group activities are planned, which mostly involve students to work in pairs or in a small group (buzz group). The majority of students (81.3%) perceived that working in groups give them a chance to learn better. However, the limited types of grouping employed in the classroom tend to create monotonous classroom atmosphere. The data from interview revealed that teachers per-ceived that not many types of cooperative learning can be prac-ticed because of the limited time available for teaching 'a big top-ic'. It is also perceived that learning occurs in any group activi-ties, and interaction can be expected to occur regardless of group-ing types used.

Copyright

© 2018, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Luh Artini
AU  - Ni Nyoman Padmadewi
PY  - 2018/02
DA  - 2018/02
TI  - Collaboration in EFL Classes: Listening to Teachers' and Students' Voices
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Education Innovation (ICEI 2017)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 184
EP  - 187
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icei-17.2018.49
DO  - 10.2991/icei-17.2018.49
ID  - Artini2018/02
ER  -