The Nature of Cooperative Learning

18 ideas, keep an open mind, act in a trustworthy way, and promote a safe feeling for all by reducing anxiety Johnson et al., 1994. 3 Individual Accountability Students perform independently even though they work together. Each individual performance is assessed. Students must take personal responsibility to work toward the group goals Johnson et al., 1994. 4 Social Skills Students learn and use appropriate social skills including leadership, decision-making, trust building, communication and conflict-management Johnson et al., 1994.

5 Group Process

Students must analyze how well they are achieving their goals while maintaining effective working relationships in order to develop the group process Johnson et al., 1994. Nation 1989 mentions several factors that determine the success of the groupwork. The factors are: 1 the learning goals of the group work, 2 the task, 3 the way information is distributed, 4 the seating arrangement of the members of the group, and 5 the social relationships between the members of the group. These factors should be taken seriously, otherwise, the groupwork will fail and fall to pieces. The groupwork should also be seen from the difficulty level of the task. If the task could be done by one single person, then the groupwork will be useless because every member of the group could do the task and they claim that their work is the best one. Besides, the way how the information is distributed 19 should be considered. When the teacher use one-way communication there will be no interaction between the student to their peers as well as to their teacher. The next significant thing to the successful groupwork is the arrangement of the group members. When the students face each member in the groups, the discussion could run well and effectively. Regarding the social relationships between the members of the group, people already know that everyday there will be a new problem coming to life. This happens to all people, including the members of the groupwork. If each member has a good relationship, there will be less problem. Unfortunatlely, if the members have a conflict with the other members in the group, the groupwork will likely fall to pieces. The reason is that the members in conflict will reluctant to work in group and, therefore, these reluctant persons will harm the dynamic of the groupwork and, consequently, will drag the groupwork to the failure.

3. Junior High School

Educational system in Indonesia includes three stages or levels. The first level is primary education which involves elementary schools Sekolah Dasar or SD. The second is secondary education which involves junior high schools Sekolah Menengah Pertama or SMP and senior high schools Sekolah Menengah Atas or SMA. The third is tertiary education which involves universities, academies and other tertiary educational institutes Tanlain, 1995. Junior High School students are the students who have graduated from the Elementary School. In the Junior High School, the students are divided into three 20 grades. Those three grades are: grade seven eight and grade nine. Grade is a school level under which students are joined based on the students’ age and their cognitive development.

a. Eight Grade of Junior High School

Here in this study, the participants of the research are the 8D class students of the eight grade or the second-year students of JHS 2 Mlati Sleman. They are in the age between twelve and fifteen years old. The students receive six session of English teaching a week over a period of two semesters with the duration of 40 minutes in each meeting.

b. The Curriculum for Junior High School

Indonesian government changes the education curriculum every ten years. The latest curriculum is 2004 curriculum that is called Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi KBK or Competency Based Curriculum CBC. However, the government has developed the CBC and produced new curriculum, 2006 curriculum, which still becomes a part of CBC. The researcher puts information about 2004 curriculum because it is the root of the 2006 curriculum implementation. 1 Competency Based Curriculum Competence Based Curriculum was firstly implemented in 2004. This curriculum provides some competencies that lead to students’ achievement of discourse competence which requires the students to use English according to the cultural and situational context. However, this competence is always supported by