Students’ Attitudes Towards Cooperative Learning (CL) in EFL Writing Class

Abstract

This study focused on assessing whether or not there were differences between male and female students’ attitudes towards cooperative learning (CL) in learning writing skills based on English for Ethiopia Grade Seven Pupil’s Book. The study involved ninety students who were attending their lessons at the same school. The data for the study were gathered through questionnaires. In order to see the actual happening and to triangulate the findings of the questionnaires, interviews were conducted and classrooms were observed. The results of the study showed that the students who were administered questionnaires and interviewed understood the benefits of using CLduring writing though the number of students in each class was large, and they had poor background knowledge of English. The classroom observations proved that the number of students in each class was large; the teachers could not follow up and monitor their learners appropriately while the students were working on the writing activities in groups; the students frequently used their mother tongues rather than English during group discussions; the teachers did not set a time limit for the discussions, and there was no practice of evaluating the writing group activities after CL. Moreover, the mean results indicated that female students had better attitudes towards CLin learning writing skills. However, their difference is not statistically significant. The summary of the findings indicated that the writing lessons in the students’ English textbook should be taught through CL though there were some problems that have been mentioned above to practice them in the classrooms.