W10: Final (Required) Post

This week's topic is Collaboration.

I have to admit that I am not very experienced in teaching using collaborative learning. As a language instructor, I often use a lot of pair work and small group work for practicing skills in the classroom, but I don't think I've really emphasized either collaborative or cooperative learning during the major task-based assignments. But I don't really have a good justification of why I haven't employed this strategy.

In seeing the learning outcomes of using collaborative strategies, the main outcome that jumps out of me for language instruction is communication, which is a major goal of the communicative approach (currently the most widely accepted approach to language teaching).

Actually, if you examine the general principles of the communicative approach, I am a little ashamed that I haven't emphasized collaborative learning more, because these principles really do seem to lend themselves well to the described learning outcomes of collaboration:

1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
2. The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
3. The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself.
4. An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
5. An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.

"Communicative language teaching." Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 26 February 2013. Web. 22 March 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_language_teaching>.

Like I said, I have used a lot of pair work and small class work in the classroom for minor projects and assignments, but honestly, I think I've stayed away from collaboration for major projects because my assumption (or really experience) is that the students will revert to using English during collaboration. And since the communicative approach stresses the importance of teaching and learning through the target language (L2) (1. An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.), I think I (and many language instructors) try to avoid possible scenarios where students can revert back to English (L1) en masse.

However, as I'm thinking back to Nunan's five features of CLT, yes, one feature is communicating with a purpose in the L2, however, there are 4 other main features. And three of them seem to fit very nicely with the learning outcomes of collaborative teaching, especially with the goals of critical thinking and academic achievement:

• The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language but also on the learning process itself.
• An enhancement of the learner’s own personal experiences as important contributing elements to classroom learning.
• An attempt to link classroom language learning with language activities outside the classroom.

Adding to my embarrassment, every blog post I like to include a picture to accompany the topic. While looking for a picture for this post, I googled "collaborative language learning" and guess what image I found?

Publication date: 1992!! And edited by David Nunan, who is the person who is best known for defining the 5 main features of the communicative approach!

Yikes! This is far from a new concept in language teaching! How have I missed the importance of this strategy in my almost 8 years of teaching?? Major fail!

This is the book description from Amazon.com:

Collaborative Language Learning and Teaching is written for teachers, teacher educators and researchers who are interested in experimenting with alternative ways of organising teaching and learning, and who wish to create an environment in which teachers, learners and researchers can work together and learn from one another. This wide-ranging collection of papers focuses on issues such as: �The central characteristics of a collaborative approach to classroom research - Appropriate theoretical models of language and learning for informing collaborative research � Appropriate research methods, tools and techniques for collaborative investigations - Classroom tasks and patterns of organisation which facilitate cooperative learning - Organisational patterns which underlie successful collaborative teaching. The classroom-oriented studies on which the collection is based provide models for readers who wish to experiment with these ideas in their own context.

So, I'm opening my eyes to the importance of using collaborative teaching strategies in language instruction, however, I'm still having a hard time visualizing what that looks like in a language curriculum. I think I need to order this book for my personal library. (Or at least see if I can check it out from the library. ;) )