Effects of Collaborative Learning in an EFL Class: From the
Perspectives of Chinese Advanced Learners
Jie Xiaoping

Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University
xpjie@sz.tsinghua.edu.cn

Abstract
A 15-week-long EFL task based on collaborative leaning was designed in a Chinese EFL learningclass to examine how the learning style affects the advanced learners’ English study. A total of 56
Chinese non-English major graduate students took part in the research design. After the task was
finished, a questionnaire survey was made about how the students felt about the collaborative learningmodel. Data are collected and analyzed to show how actively the EFL advanced learners involved
themselves in the task, how cooperative learning benefited their English learning and growth in otherabilities, and whether they prefer cooperative learning or independent learning.

Keywords
Collaborative Learning; EFL Class; Chinese Graduate Students

Introduction
There has been a substantial quantity of research regarding the effects of cooperative learning since
early 19th century, and as Slavin (1996) mentioned, it is not just a subject of research and theory, but isused at some level by teachers. Especially, the collaborative or cooperative learning model has beenfrequently used in the EFL class to help students practice and improve their language skills. Swain(1985) put forward the output hypothesis to emphasize the importance of output in language learning.
According to Long (1996), second language learners learn effectively when they negotiate meaning inconversations. Collaborative or cooperative learning provides students opportunities to both practiceoutput skills and negotiate meaning with each other, and thereby, enhances language skills
improvement. As for graduate students, the cooperative learning model is more welcomed because
these students have a relatively high English proficiency level after about 10 years of English learning
experiences at school and university, and compared with younger learners, they are better prepared andmore experienced for group discussion and cooperative work. However, these are the author’s
assumptions, and even though a lot of researches have been done to testify the effectiveness of thislearning model, it is still not clear how the learners think about it. Perhaps some would totally disagreewith this learning style? Therefore, it is important to know about how the students see, view, feel andexperience cooperative learning.
According to Slavin (1983), there are two important components of cooperative learning methods: acooperative incentive structure and a cooperative task structure. The cooperative learning in this paper
involves both of the two components. All group members need to meet and discuss with each other tocomplete the task, and they are interdependent for the success given to the whole group. The task inthis research is a 15-week-long collaborative learning task designed in a Chinese EFL learning class.
The purpose of the research is to examine how the participants cooperate with each other to finish thetask, and whether they think the learning style has any advantages over individual learning in terms ofEnglish skills and other abilities improvement. The four major theoretical perspectives on cooperative
learning and achievement proposed by Slavin (1996) are used as a model for questionnaire design.
Motivational, social cohesion and English language development are checked. The following is adetailed description of the task design.
36

1

Collaborative Task Design

1.1
Participants
A total of 56 Chinese non-English major graduate students took part in the research design. All ofthem are first year graduate students. Since their primary school education, they have studied English
for about 10 years, and all of them have passed the National Entrance Examination for Graduate
Studies, so they are advanced EFL learners. A questionnaire survey(See Appendix B) was made to theparticipants to know about their status quo of English learning. The participants’ interest in andmotivation for English study are examined on 10-point Likert scales. These students show highaverage values of interest (7.82/10, SD 1.674 ) in and motivation (8.77/10, SD 1.440 ) for English
study.
1.2
Grouping
The 56 participants are divided into 12 groups, and each group has 4 to 6 persons. The students aregrouped according to their interest. A list of topics like English movies, English culture, movie
dubbing and imitating, public speaking, English songs, listening and dictation, and reading etc., wasrendered by the teacher for each student to choose from. Once the students decided their topics, they
formed groups with others who had chosen the same topic.
1.3
Collaborative Task
The group work lasted 15 weeks, and the three stages to complete the task are:Stage 1: Each group was required to discuss things related to their topic in English each week fromweek 1 to week 9. They were supposed to organize the meeting by themselves, and the teacher was not
involved in the choice of things to discuss or any forms of discussion. Each student wrote about their
discussion after the meeting.
Stage 2: On week 10, the students were required to introduce their group activity to other students on
campus and try to attract more people to join their group activity.
Stage 3: On weeks 14 and 15, each group gave a 10-minute presentation about what they had done,
what they had gained and improved, and how they had improved their English language skills throughthe 15 weeks. Both teacher evaluation and peer evaluation were made about each group.

2

Research Questions and Questionnaire Design

The three research questions the study attempts to answer are:1) How do the students like cooperative learning in their English study? Do they prefercooperative learning or independent learning?
2) How well does cooperative learning benefit their English learning?
3) What other abilities were improved through cooperative learning?
Accordingly, the questionnaire (See Appendix B) is designed to address the following
questions:
1) how frequently the participants held group discussion2) how actively they participated in the group task3) how frequently they coded switched between English and Chinese in discussion4) whether the group task benefited their English learning, and in what ways they benefited from thetask5) whether the group task improved the students’ abilities other than language abilities, and what theseabilities are6) whether they preferred group learning or independent learning7) whether they would like peer evaluation to be part of the assessment37

3

Data Analysis and Results

Data were collected based on an anonymous questionnaire survey. A total of 56 students took part in
the questionnaire survey. SPSS 19 is used to analyze questionnaire data. The results are as follows:
1) The participants have shown high motivation for the cooperative learning project. There are 51
students (91%) who claimed that they were active or very active in the group work，and a total of 38
students（68%）has conducted group discussion more than once every week. Forty-four students
claimed that they spoke English most of the time during their discussion, and only 12 students used
Chinese.
The participants are also asked about whether they prefer cooperative learning or independent learning.
Data show that 48 students favored cooperative learning, 4 students showed no preference, and 4
preferred independent learning. There are several reasons that the students favor cooperative learning.
First, these students are all graduate students, and more ideas and information from peers would be an
important reason for them to participate in group work. Another reason is group discussion in English
is a very good chance for them to practice listening and speaking skills, which are their weaknesses.
Besides, the topics for discussion are their interest, and learning with others who share the sameinterest would be fun.
2) To know more about how the cooperative learning style helps the students improve their language
skills, a survey has been made. As can be seen from Table 1, cooperative learning is shown to benefit
all participants’ language learning and has benefited their language learning in the following aspects:
interest, pronunciation, listening, vocabulary, knowledge about culture, and EFL learning habit
development. A total of 19 students have gained more confidence from the collaborative learning
project. More practice with other students in English leads to more confidence, and they become more
and more comfortable with speaking English. About 30% of the participants reported that they havebecome more interested in English. Ten students felt that their pronunciation has been improved
through the group work. More than 50% of the students have improved fluency, which could be
explained by the fact that they practiced speaking during the group discussion. Eight students reported
to have improved listening skills. They need to understand other group members during discussion.
There are 11 students who reported to have improved vocabulary. The group work requires searching
and collecting information about the topics they’ve decided to discuss. Thus it is possible for the
students to pick up new words and phrases from their resource materials. Nine students benefited fromthe group work by getting to know more about the English culture. Nine students reported to havedeveloped a good habit of practicing English regularly.
Table 1 Students’ Self-report of Progress in Language Learning Through Cooperative Learning
Number of Participants(56 participants)
19
17
10
24
8
11
9
9

confidence
interest
pronunciation
fluencylistening
vocabularyknowledge about culture
practice English more regularly

3) Research has found that the participants have not only improved their language skills, but also otherskills. Collaborative learning enables the students to discuss, decide, work, help and learn with eachother. Table 2 shows that 38 students out of 56 reported having gained friendship, 26 students having
developed a stronger sense of teamwork spirits, and 19 students having improved their skills to
support and cooperate with others. Because the task requires the students to promote their group
activity on the campus, 13 students claimed that they have learned to be better organizers and 6
students have improved their publicity skills.
38

The quantitative data shown above are in accordance with the student report of their group work. A
typical student report of their group activities is shown in Appendix A. From the report, we can seethat the participants hold group discussions and activities regularly, and the students have practiced
both language skills and other skills such as cooperating skills, presentation skills and publicity skills.
The experience is fantastic, in their words.
Table 2 Students’ Self-Report of Progress in other skills
Number of Participants(56 participants)
38
26
19
13
6

friendshipteam spirits
coordinating skillsorganizing skills
publicity skills

Conclusion

4

Independent learning and cooperative learning are two different models of learning. The author madean assumption that cooperative learning works effectively in an EFL class for graduate students. It isbased on that assumption that a research design is made to test the effectiveness of cooperative
learning model. The research data have shown that Chinese EFL advanced learners show highmotivation for cooperative learning in an EFL class in China. Most of them prefer cooperative
learning model to independent learning. And the cooperative model helps graduate students improve
language and other skills. Other than language abilities, the students also gained friendship, practiced
and improved their cooperative skills, organization skills, and publicity skills.
References
Long, M. (1996). The Role of the Linguistic Environment in Second Language Acquisition. In W.
Ritchie & T. Bhatia (eds), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition, 413-68. San Diego:
Academic Press.
Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input andcomprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in second
language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.
Slavin, R. E. (1996). Research on cooperative learning and achievement: What we know, what weneed to know. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 21(1), 43-69.
Slavin, R. E. (1983). When does cooperative learning increase student-achievement. Psychological
Bulletin, 94(3), 429-445.
Appendix A. Student Sample Writing about Group Discussion (Weekly Journal)

I.

II.

At the meeting today, we meet each other as a team. Our four members are fromdifferent majors. And there are two girls including me from literal arts, while thetwo boys are from engineering majors. Though we have different backgrounds,
all of us like watching English drama and movies, which leads us to form theinterest group. And we can share ideas and opinions on English movies. That’s
fantastic. At this meeting, we also make some simple plans for our activities in
the following term together, including how to hold our activities, what we wantto get after those activities. Not only will our members have more meetings towatch or appreciate English movies, but also we are going to expand our groupby attracting some people who have common interest to join us. I’m looking
forward to growing up with our group.
Today, we have an discussion on the movie, Beautiful Mind. This movie is popular,
and we are all interested in it. So we choose this movie to have a deep learning.
This time, our discussion focuses on its plots and personal feelings on this movie.
39

In my opinion, when Nash was young, his classmates were so excellent that hewas so eager to be more successful than them. The pressures from outside andinside eventually drive him mad. What he couldn’t do in common life was allcompleted in his imagination. Fortunately, he has a good wife and some kindfriends. With their help, he can balance the reality and his imagination. At last, hegot the Nobel Prize. Sometimes, like Nash, we really want to get something andtry our best. In this process, how to treat the distance between your desire andthe reality is so important. We should just focus on what we could do, rather thanwhat we could get. And whatever happened to you, please remind yourself ofinsisting on our target. In our discussion, other members share their ideas. Like
Liu Lei said, he thought it was Alicia’s care and love became the motive force of
beating the disease and helping Nash’s heart get out of the terrible phantasmal.
III. This time we concentrate on vocabulary and expressions that appear in Beautiful
Mind. I think learning some local expressions is a good approach to improve ourlanguage skills from watching movies. And so we take this as our second
discussion theme on this movie. After watching this movie, some expressions
catch our attention, such as “I have a chip on both shoulders”, “I got to getsomething down”, “lone wolf”, “No stretch. Pressed and folded”, and so on. We arefamiliar with those single words, but when they are combined with each other,
we can’t get their meanings immediately. The only approach is to pay more
attention to these local expressions while reading or watching. And the sharingof others helps me notice some expressions that may be ignored by myself. And
when I was watching this movie, I take a memo of those expressions, such as“dull your mind”, “show some promise”, “your answer isn’t face the wall”, “havethe upper hand”, “right this way”, “great deeds come at great cost”, “lost track
time of work”, and “lost his grip on reality”.
IV. Since speaking is also very important for improving language skills, this time wechoose some dialogues from the movie to imitate. In my preparation, I have paid
attention on its tones, stress and pronunciation. And I try to speak like thecharacter in the movie. It is very difficult to imitate their talking well. Tang Wei is
my partner. And we choose a dialogue between Nash and his roommate in the
beginning. It just lasts for about 1 minute. But they talk a lot. It’s not easy to catchtheir speed. We have prepared a lot in our spare time. At the meeting today, we
performed it in front of our other members. And our members appreciate it andgive us their advices on our performance.
V. Today, we transfer our discussion to another movie, The Pursuit of Happiness. As
we know, it’s a very moving story. Just like last movie, we first have a discussion
on its plots and our own watching feelings. In the movie, the poor Christ was
unfortunate, for he got a wife who was not understandable at all and was in badluck with his business. But he was very fortunate also, for he got a son who wasvery thoughtful and, I think, tough life experiences always make a great person. It
is said that this movie is inspired by a true story, and I want to say, this movie
does inspire me a lot. What impressed me most are: Christ’s wife left him
because of life pressure, and Christ’s love to his son and Christ’s strong belief
towards life. Through these, I know that it is not easy to be a good husband and agood Papa, since in reality only love cannot make everything. And I also learn
that one has to strongly believe himself, no matter how difficult the situation is,but of course, hard-working is indispensable. In our discussion, we shared ourviewpoints on this movie. Some members were impressed by the spirits of40

Christ’s, while some are moved by Christ’s love for his little son. But we alllearned something from the movie.
VI. Today, we focus on good expressions we can learn from The Pursuit of Happiness.
Everyone show us some expressions they noted when watching the movie. What
I show are “I mean that”, “you made all the right moves”, “you want nobody’s
hands in your pockets but your own”, “bring them over”, “Win a round”, “I was
broke”, “Don’t jerk me around”, “stand out in my program”, “lack out” and “youare a piece of work”. Some were also showed by others. And we go to watch themovie when we can’t explain its meaning easily. In this process, not only have we
get lots of good and local expressions, also we could improve our speaking skills.
I think it is wonderful to learn something together.
VII. At the meeting today, we turn to do some imitations on some chosen dialogues ofthe movie. The two boys in our group a dialogue happened in Christ’s job
interview. In the beginning, Christ was depressed since he thought he was goingto lose the job. But fortunately, the boss chose to give him a chance. In the whole
dialogue, we can feel the change of Christ’s moods, from sad to excited. And I
think the two boys have done a great job. Their pronunciations, tones andstresses are very familiar with the original dialogue in the movie.
VIII. This time we have a discussion on how to hold an open activity. First, we decideon the theme. We are going to have a discussion on the movie, Forrest Gump,
which is well known. And in addition, we will share ideas on other movies anddramas. After deciding what to do in the salon, we make a poster together. And
we come up with several interesting words to attract more people to join us.
Then, we decide to stick it tomorrow. We are looking forward to getting others’
attentions.
IX. Today, we hold a salon as we’ve planned. Surprisingly, nearly 10 people come tojoin our salon. And in the beginning, everyone make a brief but interesting
self-introduction. And many people tell us their favorite movie or TV drama.
When there is someone whose favorite movie is exactly what you like best, somekind of friendship is built up. And we take about the movie, Forrest Gump. The
comprehension of Hamlet varies from reader to reader. Everyone can havedifferent feeling on one movie, which lead to a hot discussion. In general, I think
it is successful.
X. Since the time for group report is coming, we have an discussion on how to makea good report. First, we make sure what we want to show in front of the class.
Then we divide it into 4 parts, and each member is responsible for one part. Tangfor introduction, Yuan for internal meetings part, Liu for salon part, and me forconclusion. In my opinion, what we’ve done in this term is wonderful, and now
we should try to show them to others. It may be a test for our improvement inEnglish skills. I wish it will be successful.
Appendix B.

Questionnaire Survey（Anonymous）

1. Self Assessment (1: lowest; 10: highest)
Listening 1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Speaking 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Writing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Reading 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1041

Confidence in English 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 910Interest in English 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Motivation for Learning English 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Motivation for Cooperative Learning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
2. Your Area of Interest:（E.g.：Movies, public speaking….）
3. My group conduct group discussion
A. at least once every week
B. once every week
C. about once every two weeks D. seldom
4. I wasin the group discussion.
A. very active
B. active, and did my best
C. active, but could do better
D. not active
5. During the group discussion,.
A. I seldom spoke English.
B. I spoke Chinese most of the time.
C. I spoke English most of the time.
D. I seldom used Chinese.
6. The group work has
benefited my English language learning.
A. greatly
B. to a certain degree
C. almost not
7. The group learning has benefited my English learning in the following aspects：（E.g.: boosting my
confidence in learning English well, improving my pronunciation, improving fluency in speaking English,
improving listening, knowing more about culture.…）8. I’ve improved other abilities besides language progress through the cooperative learning project:（E.g.:developed my teamwork spirits, organization skills, cooperation skills, and publicity skills…）
9. Cooperative learning is
independent learning.
A. more effective and beneficial than（Reasons:
B. almost the same as
C. not so effective and beneficial as（Reasons:
10. I hope group work accounts for％ of the total score.
11. Would you like peer evaluation to be part of the evaluation?
A. Yes（Reasons：
B. No（Reasons：
12. The reasons I like the group work are:
The reasons I do not like the group work are:
13. Suggestions for the group activity design:

Appendix C. Peer Evaluation

Group
Item

Score（10－6-3）

Communication Skills
42

）

）

）
）

Organization
Impact on Audience
Teamwork
Presentation Skills

43