In conclusion, the language features play significant role to assist in getting the meaning of a story. For instance, through past tense
appeared, it tells the readers exactly as a major feature of a story used. Next, the use of conjunction is relatively necessary to describe the
characters and settings. Hence, all of the language features are conveyed to construct the story more alive.
B. Cooperative Learning
1. The Understanding of Cooperative Learning
.
Cooperative learning is an approach to teaching that makes maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups
of learners in the classroom.
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In the cooperative learning, students can interactive with other students in a group and share about the material which is taught.
Carolyn Kessler said about cooperative learning on her book: “Cooperative Learning is a body of literature and research
that has examined the effect of cooperation in education. It offers ways to organized group work to enhance learning
and increase academic achievement. Cooperative learning is not general, free discussion: nor all types of group work
necessarily cooperative. Cooperative learning is carefully structured
– organized so that each learner is motivated to increase each other’ learning”.
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In teaching learning process cooperation among the students is essential, where the students can work together and build the interaction
with all the students in the class. “Cooperative Learning is group learning activity organized so that
learning is dependent on the socially structure exchange of information
15
Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching 2ed, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 19
16
Carrolyn Kessler, Cooperative Language Learning, New Jersey: Englewood Cliffts, 1992 p. 1
between learners in groups and which each learner is held accountable for his or her own and its motivated to increase
the learning of others..”
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In teaching learning process, every student has different ability. Therefore, through cooperative learning it is a good idea to make them into
groups. The groups should consist of students with high-level ability, students with the low one, diligent students, and the lazy one. They are
gathered in order to make high ability students help the other students. Besides that, it is also expected that they can increase their tolerances.
Jane Arnold says in his book that cooperative learning is “more that just small group activity. In a well-structured cooperative-task, there is
a genuine information gap, requiring learners to both listen to contribute to and development of an oral, written or other product which represent the
group’s effort, knowledge and perspective.
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The success of cooperative learning depends on organization of group work because cooperative learning has goal to enhance learning
achievement by encouragement of interaction and cooperation from each other.
From all explanation above, it is obvious that cooperative learning is different from traditional group activity. Cooperative learning is not just
putting students into group but they should learn social skills, how to cooperate with others, and provides more opportunities for students to take
more interaction that is be active. The cooperative learning requires students to be an active in the groups, to give contribution and achieve the
common goals of every member in the group. 2.
The Characteristics of Cooperative Learning
There are many basic characteristics that should be noticed for successful cooperative learning, as follow:
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17
Jack C. Richards and Theodore S. Rodgers, Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching 2ed, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 192
18
Jane Arnold, affect in Language Teaching, Cambridge: University Press, 1999, p. 226-227
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Jane Arnold, Affect in,…..p.228
a. Positive Interdependence means that the success of students is
linked with the success of their team members. The success one learners is dependent on the other learners.
b. Group formation is an important factor in creating positive
interdependence like setting up for instance. c.
Individual accountability means that teacher should assess the amount of effort that each other member is contributing these
can be done by giving an individual test to each student and randomly calling students to present their group work. The
performance of each member is assessed and results are given to the team and the individual so that the team members cannot get
free ride on the efforts of their teammate. d.
Social skills determine the way students interact with each other as teammates. Usually some explicit instruction in social skills
is needed to ensure explicit successful interaction. e.
Group processing. Besides engaging in group tasks, learners also need to reflect upon their group experiences, noting how
group members interacted doing that task, the kind and number of contributions each made, and the difficulties that were
encountered as different views were suggested or one number was noticeably silent or vocal. Through this processing, learners
acquire or refine meta-cognitive and socio-affective strategies of monitoring, learning from others, and sharing ideas turns. In that
reflection they also engage in language use is not typically available or fostered in traditional language classroom or
activities. Cooperative learning teams are deliberately heterogeneous and
consist of two to four members. In bigger groups, there is a high achiever, one or two average achievers and a low achiever. The groups are chosen
by the teacher after careful consideration. The teams are responsible for learning the task together, helping each other. Learners encourage
explaining ideals or skills to one another, each member being an active participant and an important resource person for whole team.
From all explanations above, the writer brief that in order to cooperative learning more effective, teachers must understand the nature
of cooperation and essential components of cooperative learning. Teachers also have to understand the process of five elements of cooperative
learning as mentioned above-positive interdependence, group formation, individual accountability, social skills, and group processing.
3.
The Principles of the Cooperative Learning
In cooperative learning the teacher and the students should have known and understood some principles in cooperative learning, they are:
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a. Students are encouraged to think of “positive interdependence”
which means that the students are not thinking competitively and individualistically, but rather cooperatively and in terms of group.
b. In cooperative learning, students often stay together in the same
groups for a period of time so they can learn how to work better together. The teachers usually assign students to the groups so that
the group are mixed-males and females, different ethnic group, different proficiency levels, etc. this allows students to learn from
each other and also gives them practice is how to get along with people different from themselves.
c. The efforts of and individual help not only the individual to be
rewarded, but also others in the class. d.
Social skills such as acknowledging another’s contribution, asking others to contribute, and keeping the conversation calm need to be
explicitly taught. e.
Language acquisition is facilitated by students interacting in the target language.
f. Although students work together, each student is individually
accountable. g.
Responsibility and accountability for each other’s learning is shared.
h. Each group member should be encouraged to feel responsible for
participating and for learning. Leadership is „distributed. i.
Teachers not only teach language; they teach cooperation as well. Of course, since social skills involve the use of language,
cooperative learning teaches language for both academic and social purposes.
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Diane Larsen Freeman, Technique and Principles in Language Teaching, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 167-168
Based on the principles of cooperative learning above, the writer resumes that when students have not been taught to work with others,
teachers should not expect to be able to put them work together effectively but teacher should consider skills of students. Teachers have to understand
that students need to be taught interpersonal and small group learning skills in order to students can adapt with other students.
Therefore, in one group there will be no students who depend on or are depended on another student and they have big responsibilities to their
own selves and also to their group. The role of the teachers in this technique is only as facilitators, which means they only give feedback or
corrections to the students about the learning. It is not only the materials that being learned but also the way to socialize among the members of the
group.
4. The Types of the Cooperative Learning
