Definition of Cooperative Learning

22 by Slavin, 1990:16. In this context, group member should help the group mates to do things that can help their group to succeed, for example by encouraging their group mates, improving their own mastery of materials etc., in order to achieve their personal goal. When one member fails to do his or her responsibility, it will become the failure for every member of the group. This is when each member should work together to achieve shared goals and they work together to maximize their own and each other‟s learning. Johnson and Johnson as cited by Gillies et al, 2008 called this “we sink or swim together”. According to Richards and Rodgers 2001, in language teaching cooperative learning has goals such as: a. To provide opportunities for naturalistic second language acquisition through the use of interactive pair and group activities. b. To provide teachers with a methodology to enable them to achieve this goal and one that can be applied in a variety of curriculum settings. c. To enable focused attention to particular lexical items, language structures, and communicative functions through the use of interactive task. d. To provide opportunities for learners to develop successful learning and communication strategies. e. To enhance learner motivation and reduce learner stress and to create a positive affective classroom climate. Based on the goals of cooperative learning from Richard and Rodgers, the researcher draws description that when the students learn interactively in pair or group work, they will learn from their friends indirectly. Their friends should become their model and also encourage them to succeed. This is when the acquisition of language happens naturally. Every student has the same chance in taking part in the learning process. Each of them has been given group and individual tasks to complete which becomes their responsibility as individual or as 23 a group member. They have to develop good cooperation and communicative skill within the group members. Each student also has to act as resources to each other so that they can create more active roles in their learning. Based on the fifth point of Cooperative Learning goals by Richard and Rodgers, we understand that Cooperative learning can be used to enhance students‟ motivation. The adolescents tend to have fear, confusion and even stressful emotion in learning process. By using the cooperative learning approach, the positive environment is proposed to them in order to reduce their stress through group work and participation.

d. Student Team Achievement Division Method

There are several methods of the Cooperative Learning approach that are used in teaching, namely Student Team Learning, Student Team Achievement Division STAD, Teams-Games-Tournament, Jigsaw, Team Accelerated Instruction, Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition, etc. In this research, the researcher is going to use STAD or Student Team Achievement Division as the cooperative learning method in improving student participation. According to Slavin 1990, “the Student Team Achievement Division is a learning method in which students are assigned to group of four students that are mixed in performance level, gender, and ethnicity ” p. 5. In the STAD method, the teacher presents the lesson to the students. Students have to work in their group to make sure that every member has comprehended and mastered the material. The students later have to take individual quizzes on the material and 24 their result will be added to the group score for the recognition of the groups. When the group meets certain criteria, they will be given rewards. According to Slavin 1990, the main idea behind Students Team- Achievement Division is to motivate students to encourage and help each other to master skill presented by the teacher p. 6. In this context, each student definitely has to take part in the learning process. Their friends act as the supporter and also their observer, because besides giving encouragement to other group mates, group member also has the role as the supervisor of their friends learning. As described by Slavin 1990, the students must encourage their teammates to do their best, expressing norm that learning is important, valuable, and fun p. 6. Even though teamwork is essential in STAD method, when the students do their individual quizzes, they cannot help each other. This is when the students use their own understanding of the material which they learn in group activities with their group mates before. Since there is an urge for every member to master the material and help each other, from five essential elements of cooperative learning, the individual accountability of each student is mostly needed. Slavin 1990, states that “this individual accountability motivates students to do a good job in explaining to each other, as the only way for the team to succeed is for all team members to master the in formation or skill being taught”. As stated by Richards and Rodgers 2001, individual accountability involves both group and individual performance, for example, by assigning each student a grade on his or her portion of a team project or by calling on a student at random to share with the whole class, with group members, or with another group.