The Effects of Cooperative Learning Techniques on Thai Secondary School Students' Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Cooperative learning (CL) is a teaching strategy where small groups, individually with students of varying ability levels, use various learning activities to enhance their understanding of a subject. This study examined the effect of cooperative learning on reading comprehension and sought to explore participants’ attitudes toward the CL method. Ninety Thai EFL secondary students were divided into the control group (n=30) and the experimental group (n=60). Their age ranged between 13 and 14 years old. They had studied English for more than seven years, and none of them had studied English in an English-speaking country. Three research instruments were employed to collect the data: a reading comprehension test, a questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview. The quantitative data were analyzed using t-test, standard deviation, mean, and percentage. The results showed that the CL method could lead to gains in reading comprehension among Thai secondary school students. Participants in the group control scored 10.76 at T1 and 10.90 at T2. However, it must be noted that, in the current study, the CL and control groups had significantly different levels of reading comprehension before the investigation, which limits the conclusions of this study. And the overall means of the self-ratings from the attitude questionnaire was 3.45. Nevertheless, the qualitative findings supported the benefits of the CL method and the positive attitudes toward the CL approach. Overall, the current results support the benefits of cooperative learning on reading comprehension, and CL also developed secondary students' attitudes toward reading comprehension.

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