Cooperative Language Learning in School Contexts

Cooperative learning is designed to engage learners actively in the learning process. Through inquiry and interaction with peers in small groups, learners work together towards a common goal. As a major movement within the broad context of the educational mainstream, cooperative learning has specific relevance for literacy and language learning. Communicative approaches to second/foreign language teaching can effectively draw on the principles and characteristics of cooperative learning to make language teaching and learning more effective. This joining of communicative instructional approaches with cooperative learning should be effective whether applied to the second/foreign language classroom or to the sheltered classroom integrating language learning with content-area learning.