a way to improve group activities

8/7/2019 a way to improve group activities

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Co-operative goal structure: away to improve group activitiesGeorge Jacobs

Group activities are used in many aspects of second-language instruction.Among the reasons cited for their use is that they encourage students towork together, helping each other. However, simply putting studentstogether in a group is no guarantee that co-operation will occur. One factoraffecting the success of group activities is the goal structure present in theclassroom. This article explains the concept of goal structure, illustratesthree principal types of goal structure (co-operative, competitive, and indi-vidualistic), and high lights the bene fits of a co-operative goal structure.Additionally, the article discusses the effect of learning about goal struc-tures on the author's teaching methods.

Introduction

Initial experiences

For many years group activities have been advocated for the second/foreignlanguage classroom. The mid-1980s have been no exception (see, forexample, Long and Porter 1985). Of course, any set of techniques, nomatter how good it sounds in theory, needs to be examined to discover howbest it can be implemen ted in practice. This is certainly the case with grou pactivities. In part because of a lack of understanding of the dynamics ofgroup activities, it is not uncommon to hear teachers say, 'I tried puttingstudents in groups a few times, but it didn't work, so I went back to theregular way.' By describing my own experience using groups in a writingclass, this article examines one way of making group activities more suc-cessful: the use of a co-operative goal structure.As a teacher of ESL/EFL, I have sometimes used group activities in myclasses because I believe they promote learning by increasing studentinvolvement in the class. I used group activities in a writing class forEnglish majors at a large public university in Thaila nd. Students w orked ingroups of three, reading a nd giving feedback to each other on compositiondrafts. (See Raimes 1987 for examples of how this can be done.) Throughteacherstudent journ als an d my own observations, I m onitored how w ellthe groups were functioning (Jacobs, in press). While there were somepositive results from learners giving feedback on their peers' drafts, therewere also problems.

On e of these problems was a lack of co-operation among gro up m embe rs.Some students com plained abo ut group-m ates who only wanted to receivehelp from others, but were unwilling to give help in return. When I putstude nts into groups, I hoped they would just naturally co-operate w itheach other. But my experience with this class showed that groups did notnecessarily equal co-operation. My e xpectations abou t the benefits of groupwork had not been justified.ELT Journal Volume 42/2 April 1988 Oxford University Press 1988 97


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Thnm typms of goalstructure

Onntt superiority ofco-opmrathrm gomlrtructurm

However, because I still believed that group work had a useful place inESL/EFL instruction, I began to look for ways to make group activitiesfunction better. During this search, I found an article in which 'goalstructure' was defined as specifying 'the type of interdependence amongstudents as they strive to achieve educational objectives' (Johnson 1979:145). What this meant to me was that the way that the school administra-tion and I organized the classroom environment affected to what extentstudents would want to help each other learn. An explanation of threemajor types of goal structure, as described in Joh nso n's article and inothers, may make the concept clearer.The literature on 'goal structure' classifies it into three main kinds: co-oper-ative, com petitive, and individualistic. With a co-operative goal structur e,individual participants can only achieve their own goals if the people theyare working with also achieve theirs. For examp le, a basketball team has aco-operative structure because by helping their team-mates score baskets,players are helping their team, and thus themselves win. In a language-teaching context, one instance of a co-operative goal structure would be in awriting class when a gro up works together on their com positions, with allgroup members receiving the average of the scores given to the compositionof each group member.

The type of relationship involved with a competitive goal structure isexactly the opposite of that found in a co-operative goal structure. Th ere isa negative relation between the possibility of individuals attaining theiraims and their peers doing so also. In other w ords, one person achieves heror his goal only if other people do not achieve theirs. An example ofcompetitive goal structure would be a tennis match. Here, the worse oneperson plays, the better is the other's chanc e to win, and to win by a widemargin. In writing classes, a competitive goal structure occurs when stu-den ts write compositions and the teacher uses norm-referenced grading, forexample the best composition gets an A and the worst one gets an F.The third goal structure is an individualistic one. Here, there is nointerrelation between the goal attainm ents of the people involved. With an

individualistic goal structure, one person's success is independent ofanother's. For instance, there is an individualistic goal structure whenswimmers are racing, not to sec who is fastest, but to try to improve theirown personal best t imes. An individualistic goal structure is present inwriting class when students write their own compositions, and the teacheruses criterion-referenced grading, i .e. the compositions are graded accord-ing to how they compare with a pre-determined level of quality and notwith each other.I found th at mu ch research on goal structure had been done by scholars ineducation and psychology. Overall , these studies showed a co-operativegoal struc ture to be superior to competitive and individualistic goal struc-ture on measures of both student achievement and atti tude (Johnson tt al.1981 and Kohn 1986). And, contrary to what many people might expect,the research has shown that the learning of high-achieving students usuallybenefited and never suffered when they were grouped with lower-achievingpeers (Johnson and Joh nso n 1985).The only study I found done with second/foreign language learners(Gund erson and Joh nso n 1980) reported that co-operative learning groupsencouraged positive student atti tudes towards the target language (in this

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case French), and towards their peers and their teacher. A reason forco-operative learning being particularly beneficial in the second/foreignlanguage classroom could be that the mutual dependence that co-oper-atively structured activities require would lead to more communicationamo ng stude nts because they need to exchange information and advice inorder to succeed in achieving their goals (Doughty and Pica 1986). In thecase of a writing class, increas ed com mu nication would be beneficial in twoways. First , students w ould be learning more ab out how to write in En glish.Second, and most important for language learning, students would bepersua ded to speak the target language in their groups more often, and forreasons other than mere 'practice'. These advantages would benefit , inparticular, monolingual classes, in which the 'ne ed' to use English has to becarefully constructed.

Although there is l it t le research on co-operative goal structures in ES L/EF L, its use is not unc om mo n. Activities such as j igsaw read ing, stripstories, and 'Spot the Difference' are co-operative learning activities thatare used in many classrooms. For example, with strip stories (Boyd andBoyd 1980), each stu den t in a grou p has one sentenc e of a story. The goal isfor the group to put the sentences in the correct order. Looking at eachother's sentences is not allowed; students must listen carefully as eachgroup member reads his or her sentence aloud. Thus, students must worktogether to succeed.

Looking back After reading about goal structures, I looked back at the writing class I hadtaught to see what its goal structure was. Many factors can affect this. Theyinclude the grading system used, students ' previous educational experi-ences, types of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation among students, friend-ships between students, and societal norms.As mentioned earlier, the students often worked in groups; so it seemed,at first glance, that the goal structure was co-operative. However, grades forcompositions, final exams, and the course as a whole were not related togroup members' grades. Instead, the grading system used was a combina-tion of norm-referenced and criterion-referenced grading. Thus, while itmay have looked as though the class had a co-operative goal structu re, thegrading system encourag ed studen ts to see their peers ' success in learningto write as either irrelevant to their own interests (individualistic goalstructure) or in contradiction with them (competitive goal structure).

Another factor which may have discouraged co-operation w as the kind ofgoal structure present during students ' earlier learning experiences. Stu-dents told me that co-operative learning had been rare for them, whe ther a tprimary, secondary, or tertiary levels. This was important, because prac-tice in working toge ther an d tr ainin g in the skills necessary to do so are keyto successful interaction among students.Trying agmln The next semester I taught a similar writing course. This t ime I includedsome cooperatively structured group activities. The first step in doing this

was to discuss with the class how they could help each other write some ofthe term's compositions. I explained the benefits that could be gained fromworking together and also brought up what I had found during the lastsemester to be two major objections to group activities: students' lack ofability an d un willingness to help each other. As to lack of ability, I said th atwhen giving advice to their peers, students should focus on the specificC o-operative goal structure . 9 9


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language features covered in class, for example connectors, and would notbe held responsible for aspects of English other than those covered in class.On the second objection, about peers ' unwillingness to assist others, Isaid tha t grade ave raging would be used to encourage stude nts to help theirfellow group members. The way this worked was that in a group of three,stud ents ' grades w ere calculated by averaging the score on their composi-tion and the average of their two group-m ates' com positions. For example,if a stud ent 's pape r got a score of 90, and the two other pa pers got 85 and 75(an average of 80), then the s tudent 's g rade w ould be 85 (the average of 90and 80). During the class discussion on using group activities, one stud entsaid she did not want to work in a group. Tha t was allowed. However, laterin the term, this student changed her mind and started working with ag roup .

Another step in the pre paration of die class for co-operative learning wasto talk about some of the skills necessary to productive group functioning.The se included m aking sure everyone participated; paying attention whenothers spoke; pointing out good points in compositions, and not onlymistakes; responding to the content, and not only the form; and criticizingthe draft, but not the person who wrote it. Additionally, throughout theterm, I paid attention to how well the groups were functioning, gave adviceand reminders about how to work well together, and b rought the attentionof the whole class to instances where students had given good advice.

During the term stude nts did not always work in groups. However, whenthey did work in groups, diis was usually co-operatively struc tured. Mostfrequendy, students commented on each other's composition drafts, andthe grade averaging system mentioned earlier was used. On one occasion,each three -mem ber gro up wrote a joint five-paragraph composition, withan introduc tion, three body paragr aphs , and a conclusion. To help encour-age participation from everyone in the group, each student first wrote aseparate draft and then the group chose one main paragraph from eachper son 's draft to use as a start for the draft of the join t c om position.My e xperiences w ith different w ays of struc turing g roup activities werein no way a scientifically designed experiment. Nevertheless, I sensed diat

in the second semester, the groups worked together better than diey had inthe other class the previous term. Also, there was less negative reactionfrom students about using groups. This, and to a greater extent die largebody of research done in other areas of education and in other settings(Kohn 1986) encourages me to continue to use co-operatively structuredactivities.Conclusion The intent of this article has not been to maintain that all activities shouldhave a co-operative goal structure, nor that activities with other goalstructures are not a necessary part of education. But when much is saidabout die need for competition in order for countries, businesses, andindividuals to be successful, it should also be pointed out that muchevidence shows co-operation to be the key to success in life in general, as wellas in learning. Perhaps by structuring co-operative interaction among

studen ts in the classroom, we can not only improve the learning that occursthere, but also possibly m ake a contribution towards encouraging co-oper-ation among people outside die classroom as well. For a much fullertreatment of this topic, and especially for ideas about implementingco-operative learning, I recommend Circles ofLearning (Johnson el al. 1984).Received March 1937100 G eorge Jacobs


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Rmfonnc*aB oyd, J . R. and M . A. B oyd. 1980. Alice Blows A Fuse.Englewood Cliffs, New Jers ey: Prentice Ha ll.Doughty, C. and T. Pica. 1986. ' "Information gap"tasks: do they facilitate second language acqui-sition?' TESOL Quarterly 20/2:305-25.Gunde r son , B . an d D . W .Johnson . 1980. 'Buildingpositive attitudes by using cooperative learninggroups. ' Foreign Language Annals 13/1:39-43.Jacobs, G. In press. 'First experiences with peer feed-back on compositions: student and teacher reac-tion. ' System.Johnson , D . W . 1979. Educational Psychology.Englewood Cliffs, New Jers ey: Pre ntice Ha ll.John son, D . W., G. Maruyama, R. John son, D.N e l s o n , an d L. Skon. 1981. 'Effects of coo perative ,competitive, and individualistic goal structures onachievement: a meta-analysis. ' Psychological Bulletin89/1 :47-62 .Johnson, D. W., R. T .Johnson, E . Holubec , and P.R oy . 1984. Circles of Learning. Alexandria, Virginia:

Association for Supervision and CurriculumDevelopment.John son, D. W. an d R. T.Johnson. 1985. 'Th e inter-nal dynamics of co-operative learning groups' in R.Slavin et al. (eds.): Learning to C ooperate, Cooperating toLearn. New York: Plenum Press.Kohn, A. 1986. No Contest. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Long, M. H. an d P. A. Porter. 1985. 'Group work,interlanguage talk, and second language acqui-sition.' TESOL Quarterly 19/2:207-23.Raimes, A. 1987. Exploring Through Writing. New York:St. Martin 's Press.

77ra a uth orGeorge Jaco bs has an MA in Linguistics with aspecialization in TESOL from the University of Illin-ois-Chicago. He has taught in Thailand and thePeople's Republic of China. At present he is teachingin Honolulu.

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