Relevant Studies IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN XI S 4 AT SMA N 1 MUNTILAN IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR 2012/2013.
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Activities should be meaningful and collaborative, where students are encouraged to become responsible for their own learning as well as helping
others to learn Madrid in Luchini, 2004. Furthermore, collaborative group work or meaning-focused instruction will create more opportunities for
students to use language for learning, to negotiate meaning, self-select when to participate and manage the topic of discussion, while teacher-directed or
form-focused instruction will create more opportunities for students to reflect on the structure and organization of the language. Preferably, second
language classrooms should create opportunities for students to participate in both meaning- and form-focused instruction, as both are supposed to
contribute to second language acquisition Johnson in Grundman, 2002. In addition, Coelho in Grundman 2002 argues cooperative small-group
instruction provides students with opportunities to explore, clarify and internalize ideas among their peers. This kind of classroom conversation
helps students to develop higher-level thinking skills through the analysis, evaluation, synthesis and application of new information.
Negative affective domains should be diminished in order to get students’ positive affective domains. At this point, Duxbury and Tsai 2010
states that foreign language anxiety is a universal phenomenon that inhibits students’ achievement in ESL and EFL classrooms. Cooperative learning has
the ability to diminish the negative affective domains because students’ self- esteem can be built through power of group. Johnson, et al. 1990 states that
cooperative learning has been suggested as one possible means of reducing students’ anxiety in classrooms Duxbury and Tsai: 2010.
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Since self-esteem could be built with cooperative learning, other affective domains could be affected too. According to Brown 2000:145-154
there six affective domains which contribute to the success of learners’ communication. They are self-esteem, inhibition, risk-taking, anxiety,
empathy, extroversion. In this case, Cooperative learning shows its contribution to the success
of learning process, especially learning of speaking of English since research has shown that cooperative learning is able to increase students’ talk, increase
variation of conversation, create more relaxed atmosphere, generate greater motivation, provide more negotiation of meaning, and increase the amount of
comprehensible input. Liang, Mohan, Early, 1998; Olsen Kagan, 1992 in Jacobs and Hall in Richards Renandya, 2000