13_1_tum

262 Ahmet ŞAHAN
a small group provides a natural setting for conversation where students can produce
cohesive and coherent squences of utterances, thus developing discourse competence,
but not just practicing rules of grammar (Bejanaro, 1987: 483-495). Therefore, learning
through cooperation can be said to be in agreement with the views of communicative
approaches to language teaching. In cooperative learning settings, students do not just
do the activities in the course material, or practice grammar points and language
functions, but while they are practicing these, they have the chances to apply what they
learnt in communicative activities in small groups. Therefore, increased practice of the
language for the purpose of using it communicatively contributed to the retention of
knowledge and skills about the language for longer periods of time.
However, in this study, the cooperative learning method was not found to be more
effective than the whole-class instruction method regarding critical thinking,
motivation, students’ developing positive attitudes toward learning English and their
developing positive attitudes toward each other. In this study, critical thinking was used
to mean how the students manipulated the language they were learning, how they
evaluated their language learning strategies, and how the students learned grammar
rules and whether they could consciously apply grammar rules in language production.
The improvement of critical thinking skills can be considered to take place as the
students’ proficiency in English increases. However, the students’ proficiency in
English may not have increased as much enough as to allow for the development of
critical thinking skills. A language learner has orientations toward learning a language.
These orientations are the reasons why a language learner is studying the language
(Gardner, 1985: 51-53). Therefore, short-term orientations such as getting higher marks
or just passing the course may not have led to the promotion of motivation as much as
was expected. Furthermore, research conducted on the effects of graduate students’ peer
orientation on achievement and motivation to learn with cooperative learning strategies
found that students who had high peer orientation were significantly more motivated to
learn when exposed to cooperative learning strategies than were students who had low
peer orientation despite no significant differences in their academic achievement
(Hancock, 2004:164-165). Thus, it is argued that if students’ motivation to learn is to be
promoted in cooperative lerning, then peer orientation which is the extent to which a
student prefers to work on tasks alone or with others must be determined before
designing cooperative learning strategies. It is argued that it may be difficult to create
conditions to improve attitudes toward a particular subject area in teaching activities
where the primary concern is the academic achievement in that subject area.
Furhermore, group cohesiveness, which is the strength of relationship linking the
members to each other in cooperative settings, should develop enough among the
students for the promotion of favorable attitudes toward the subject area. Regarding the
students’ developing positive attitudes toward each other, the effect of the cooperative
learning method was not observed. It is essential in cooperative learning that the
students perceive themselves as a group who work together to help their members to
learn the subject fully. This sense of accepting each other as a group may not have
developed sufficiently among group members. Also, the limited duration of the practical
training may not have led to the development of strong intermember ties in order for the
students to accept each other as supporting and sharing members.
Mart 2005 Cilt:13 No:1
Kastamonu Eğitim Dergisi