EFL Learners’ Reflections on Cooperative Learning: Issues of Implementation

Abstract

This study has described and identified the opinions and experiences of the EFL learners who participated in CL English lessons. The participants in this study were 10 tenth-grade male students, aged 14-15 years in four boys’ secondary schools in Al-Baha city. Two English teachers were asked to implement cooperative learning in their classrooms for 12 weeks. The researcher interviewed ten randomly selected students from the cooperative learning classes at the end of the study.The results and findings of this study showed that most students found that CL enabled them to improve their English skills, make new relationships with others classmates, perform different roles, improve their oral presentation skills, build their self confidence, take on responsibility, respect different opinions and offer their different views, increase their motivation, and develop their friendships with their classmates.However, there were few drawbacks and obstacles to using the CL method. These included: low achiever EFL learners depending on high achiever learners, classmates not giving group members a chance to state their opinions, and poor group member distribution and supervision by the teacher. In the following chapter, the researcher presents a general discussion of the results in this study.