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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply indebted people whose help to make my graduation paper
possible.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my
supervisor Ms. Nguyen Thi To Loan, M.A, whose invaluable comments,
guidance, criticism and generous help were very important to me in the process
of carrying out this study.
My special thanks also go to all lecturers and the staff of the Faculty of
Foreign Languages at Hung Vuong University for their useful materials,
guidance and enthusiasm during my course of study.
I really wish to thank all of my colleagues and my students at Cam Khe
high school for their enthusiasm participating in doing the questionnaires.
Without their valuable opinions and ideas on the questionnaires, the study would
not have been accomplished.
Last but not least, I would also like to show my deep gratitude to
my beloved family and my friends who always support and stand by me with
their consideration and encouragements.


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ABSTRACT
In upper-secondary schools in Vietnam, with the innovation of textbook
for 10th form students in light of Communicative Approach, the teaching of the
four skills has been much more focused on. So far, the English teaching methods
have been on the way to perfect. However, in doing project assignments is a
crucial lesson that the teachers of English experience a lot of difficulties. In
order to improve the quality of doing project writing, the graduation paper limits
itself to the study on using cooperative learning in doing project assignments for


Cooperative learning

PBL

Project Based-Learning

CLT

Communicative Language Teaching

EFL

English as a Foreign Language

ELT

English Language Teaching

ESL

English as Second Language

%

Percent


5


Table 2.1: The English entrance examination scores of

28

5

grade 10A4
Table 2.2: Summary of the students’ questionnaires

30

6

Table 2.3: Summary of the teachers’ interview questions

30

7

Table 2.4: The experiment procedure at Cam Khe High

32

8

school
Table 3.1: Students’ understand doing project assignments

34



14

Table 3.7: Students’ expectations of using CL in doing

43

project
NO
1

Figure
Figure 3.1: Student’s attitude before using of CL in doing

Page
35

2

project (%)
Figure 3.2: Students’ feeling in doing project assignments

36

3

difficult (%)
Figure 3.3: Students’ attitudes towards doing project

40

1. Rationale
Recently, cooperative learning (CL) has been a proper solution to enhance
learner’s performance. It has been widely believed that there are some sound
reasons to take CL into implementation but not other methods. Obviously, as
one of the most popular structures of learners-centered approach in the recent
years, cooperative activities have been widely used in language classroom,
especially in encouraging learner’s participation and improving their motivation
in learning. First, CL is highly appraised for their contribution to student's
achievement. It is beneficial both for academic achievement and the
development of the learners social and learning skill. Second, CL has a rigorous
foundation on research. Studies have been conducted and come to a conclusion
that CL are associated with achievement, high thinking level, self esteem, liking
for the subject matter, for schools and the intergroup relations. Furthermore,
many studies have proved that cooperative learning has positively influenced
students’ project-based learning (PBL) performance (William, 2003; Noel &
Robert, 2003; Graham, 2005). CL has enormous advantages over traditional one
because traditionally, students only communicate with the teacher about their
learning but in CL classrooms students are involved in group work and
discussions, which not only improves doing project assignments accuracy but
also betters their problem solving skills as well as establish a social atmosphere
and meaningful learning.
However, the real situation is always different from theory. According to
my observation, many students at Cam Khe High School find project a difficult
task, they find project hard to do, they only deal with tasks in class and they
don’t often learn at home. Moreover, most teachers often skip this part because
they found difficult to design classroom activities to attract students’
participation. They encounter lots of challenges in finding appropriate methods


8



9

PBL environments not only enriched and expanded their knowledge but also
achieved a higher level of motivation than the control group. The PBL in team
format activities were provided to promote the experimental group students'
motivation to succeed academically and to develop their conceptual
achievement. The results demonstrated that the PBL improved students'
understanding regarding social studies concepts and helped them achieve the
behaviors which were aimed academically. The experimental group's intended
behaviors in academic motivation at the beginning of the experimental treatment
turned into performed behaviors at the end.
2.2. In Viet Nam
The study titled “ The effects of cooperative learning activities on
improving writing skills of EFL students at International school, Vietnam
National University a quasi experimental research” of (Tran Thi Lan Huong
2013) was conducted as an attempt to examine the perceptions of first-year EFL
learners towards CL to investigate their participation level and quality in CL,
find out possible influential factors on their participation, pinpoint teachers’
monitoring strategies to motivate students to participate in activities, and
recommend several pedagogical implications to motivate and balance their oral
participation.
The study titled “The Effect of Project-Based Learning on Student
Performance” by of ( Nguyen Thi Huyen Trang (2016 ) This study analyzed
the effectiveness of an alternate pedagogical approach in the form of standardsfocused project-based learning (PBL) teaching model in psychology classes.
Both the control and experimental groups initially adopted a negative attitude
when presented with an alternate method of learning. They viewed the group
project as an unnecessary task although the literature contradicts their initial
perception. Data analyzed found that the experimental group that engaged the

English 10 textbooks?
3. Is that activity effective in enhancing student’s performance in doing
project?
5. Methodology


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5.1. Research methods
In order to accomplish this graduation paper systematically and
adequately, the quantitative and qualitative methods were used.
In the quantitative methods, two survey questionnaires were used to collect
information and evidence for the study:
-The survey questionnaires were for 42 grade 10 students at Cam Khe High
school.
At the same time, in the qualitative method, two teachers’ interviews were used
to help the author confirm the results got from the survey questionnaires.
5.2. Research procedure
The research has been done with the following steps:
- Firstly, identify the rationale of the study by using the related documents to
give background of CL, doing “project” assignments and their related aspects.
- Secondly, study the current situation in doing project lessons for grade 10
students at Cam Khe High school.
- Thirdly, find out the effectiveness and difficulties when using CL in doing
project assignments.
- Lastly, propose some solutions in using CLfor grade 10 students in doing
project assignments based on the real situation.
56. Significance of the study
Although the study was conducted on a small scale with a particular
group of grade 10 students at Cam Khe high school, the researcher hoped that

researches,

research

purposes,

research

questions,

significance of the research, the scope of the research as well as the structure of
research.
Part 2is sub-divided into four chapters:
Chapter 1 is the literature review. In this chapter, the literature on
cooperative learning and doing project are stated.
Chapter 2 focuses on the subjects of the study, discusses the instruments
and presents the data collection, analysis and research procedures.
Chapter 3 in which the current situation in applying cooperative learning
for grade 10 students at Cam Khe high schoo l lare provided.
Chapter 4 focuses on giving some major findings of the study and
suggesting some techniques for better using CL for grade 10 students in doing
project assignments.


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Part 3 summarizes the study. Also in this part, the implications for
classroom practice, the limitations of the study and suggestions for further
studies are clearly presented.
In a nutshell, this part has presented the background, and significance of

traditionally with instructor-centered lectures, individual assignments, and
competitive grading cooperatively taught students tend to exhibit higher
academic achievement, greater persistence through graduation, better high-level
reasoning and critical thinking skills, deeper understanding of learned material,
greater time on task and less disruptive behavior in class, lower levels of anxiety
and stress, greater intrinsic motivation to learn and achieve, greater ability to
view situations from others’ perspectives, more positive and supportive
relationships with peers, more positive attitudes toward subject areas, and higher
self-esteem. Another nontrivial benefit for instructors is that when assignments


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are done cooperatively, the number of papers to grade decreases by a factor of
three or four.
1.1.2. Benefits of cooperative learning in language education
CL is a good way to maximize learners’ academic achievement as well as
their social skills. Especially, highly structured CL enables them to improve their
own apprehension of the key materials while developing good relationship with
peers by encouraging and assisting them.
Firstly, according to Gillies & Ashman( 2003), the most obvious benefit
of CL for students fells into academic achievement. Most of the researches
conducted into the effectiveness of CL have positive findings. CL activities
supply learners with structured chances to collaborate to reach the common
goals in language acquisition. They help each others to benefit from their
contribution to the learning process. Working in groups enables learners to
provide each other with information, suggestions, reminders and motivation.
They not only achieve better results, develop their thinking and leadership skills
but also enjoy their learning with positive views towards other learners, good
self-esteem and a sense of belonging to a group.

also a good way to make writing more meaningful and apparent and helps
learners to become able to read their work critically.
1.1.3 Key elements of successful cooperative learning
Johnson, Johnson & Holubec (1993), Johnson & Johnson (2005), CL can
only be more produce competitive and individualistic efforts under certain
conditions. There are five basic elements of successful cooperative as follows:
1.1.3.1 Positive interdependence
According to Johnson, Johnson & Smith (1998), group members
understand that they need each other to fulfill the assigned tasks so they will
contribute to the learning of group actively. This element is the heart of CL
because the nature of CL is die improvement and maintenance of positive
interdependence among team members. Students need to do activities in which


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they learn to depend on each other as they get help from one another. Instructors
may structure positive interdependence by establishing mutual goals to
maximize own and each other’s productivity, giving joint rewards, for example
if all members achieve above the criteria each will receive bonus points, sharing
resources with members’ different expertise and 'assigning roles of summarizer,
encourager or elaborator. As a result, teamwork will help them learn valuable
skills which will benefits them vocationally and socially.
1.1.3.2 Face-to-face interaction
According to Me Groarty (1993), academic and language learning
requires that students have opportunities to understand what they hear and read
as well as express themselves in meaningful tasks. Interaction is the second
element of CL because cooperative learning makes natural demand for
communication in which students have to listen to one another ask questions
clarify issues and restate points of view. Students are engaged in high level

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Jollise (2007) mentions that each group member is accountable for
fulfilling his or her part of the work. Each student needs to develop a sense of
personal responsibility to leant and help the rest of the group to learn also.
According to Stahl (1994), the reasons why teachers put students in CL
groups is all students can achieve higher academic results individually than
when they study alone. Consequently, each student must be held individually
responsible and accountable for doing his or her own share of the work and for
learning what has been aimed to learn.
1.1.3.5. Social skill
Johnson and Holubec (1993)points out those groups cannot function well
if students do not have and use the needed social skills such as leadership,
decision-making, trust- building, communication, and conflict-management
skills. For the cooperative learning environment and precisely as academic skills
and the learner should utilize the skills they have learnt in completing assigned
activities.
Stahl (1994)asserts that students are placed in groups and expected to use
appropriate social and group skills does not mean students will use
automatically use these skills. In order to work as a group, students need to learn
to cope with leadership, trust-building, encouragement, compromise and
clarifying. Teachers need to describe expected behaviors and attitudes as-well as
assign students roles to make sure that consciously work on these behaviors in
their groups.
1.1.4 Distinguishing cooperative learning from traditional groups
According to Johnson and Johnson (2005), group learning only puts
students to sit and group without further assistance and careful structure to make
group work become teamwork; whereas cooperative learning goes strictly with
five elements including positive independence, individual accountability, quality


goals.
Interdep endence

individual

Each

member
that

Groups
No positive

group performance
believes only.

they

cannot -

Assignments

succeed unless the are

discussed

other members of with
the group succeed.

commitment


of

through

role group's work.

assignment

and

the

regular rotation of
assigned roles.
-

Members

self

and

accountable

hold
others
for

high quality work.

leadership roles.

appointed to be

Leaders

in charge of the

hip role

group

or

person

often

one
'

takes charge' and
does

all

the

work.
- Sharing of the - Each learner

relationship,

working

process- oriented

relationship,

of

product-oriented
- Teamwork skills - Assuming that
Focused
skills

are emphasized

students

have

Members are taught already required
and expected to use skills

collaborative skills.
Teacher’s Teacher’s - Little teacher's
observati
on

observation

are functioning or the
suitable quality of its work.

communicative skills,
and how to better the
quality of their task
together.

1.1.5 Limitations of cooperative learning
According to Kagan (1995), most of the limitations of CL might come
from not implementing cooperative structure carefully. Though CL has been
widely appreciated and recommended for teaching, it is not a complete teaching
method which can solve all educational matters. If the teacher just arrange
students into groups and did not structure die positive interdependence and
individual accountability, it may be easy to see that one learner takes charges
and does all the work or an aggressive student does not allow others to
participate. Second, CL is also regarded to be time-consuming, especially in the
very beginning of the process when CL is still something new to both the teacher
and students.
Moreover, teachers who want to carry out CL may encounter the hostility
and objection from students who think that they are held back by weaker and
less confident students and even some think that they are ignored by their team.
Also, some other research findings have shown negative effects of implementing
CL in teaching writing such as students feeling reluctant to work in groups


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(Storch, 2007) or not reducing learners' anxiety and apprehension when writing
(Murray, 1994).

investigative activities; give students the opportunity to work relatively
autonomously over extended periods of time; and culminate in realistic products
or presentations.
According to Blumenfeld (2009), the essence of project is that a question
or problem serves to organize and drive activities; and these activities culminate
in a final product that addresses the driving question. Project is an instructional
method centered on the learner. Instead of using a rigid lesson plan that directs a
learner down a specific path of learning outcomes or objectives, project allows
in-depth investigation of a topic worth learning more about . Through the
construction of a personally-meaningful artifact, which may be a play, a
multimedia presentation or a poem, learners represent what they've learner. In


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addition, learners typically have more autonomy over what they learn,
maintaining interest and motivating learners to take more responsibility for their
learning. Project and the construction of artifacts enable the expression of
diversity in learners, such as interests, abilities and learning styles.
Project is a method for imparting thinking competencies and creating
flexible learning environment. Project has a nature of exploring new areas,
discovering new scientific issues and integrating knowledge from different
subjects. The concept of project has a certain similarity with the notion of
knowledge building. These authors define ‘‘learning’’ as an activity that is
directed to improve mental structures, whereas ‘‘knowledge building’’ is
directed at improving knowledge objects such as explanations and models.
Project can be described as involving both vertical learning (i.e.,
cumulating of subject matter knowledge) and horizontal learning (i.e., generic
skills such as project management).
1.2.2. Definition of Project- based learning (PBL)