| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 91 === This study aims to investigate the effects of cooperative learning through reading short stories on senior high repeaters’ reading comprehension. The subjects of the study are sixty-eight first-year senior high school repeaters. Thirty-three of them join in cooperative learning as the experimental group and thirty-five are instructed in the traditional teacher-oriented strategy as the control group. All the subjects are assigned to read seven simplified American writers’ short stories. Seven tests of reading comprehension achievement are conducted to explore the effects of cooperative learning on reading comprehension achievement. The pretest and the posttest of reading comprehension proficiency are administered to probe the learning effects of different instruction strategies. Besides, the same posttest is given two months after the experiment to determine the long-term effect of cooperative learning. Then, a metacognitive awareness questionnaire and a literature reading questionnaire are adopted to examine their perceptions of reading and of literature reading. If there is no difference between the two groups, the responses will be considered as a whole to see the general tendency. Finally, a cooperative learning questionnaire is used to evaluate the participants’ responses to cooperative learning.
The major findings of this study are summarized as follows:
1. Cooperative learning works in a homogeneous class of “male” “low achievers” in terms of the participants’ motivation and their academic performance in global comprehension.
2. Although the effect of cooperative learning through literature reading on overall reading comprehension proficiency is not statistically better than that of teacher-oriented instruction, the participants involved in cooperative learning at least do as well as those in the traditional teacher-oriented classroom.
3. The results of the metacognitive awareness questionnaire and the researcher’s observation show that cooperative learning may produce better results on low achievers when teachers provide assistance or guidance.
4. Students should be given training in advance and given a period of time to get used to working cooperatively with others. Besides, if a new instruction strategy is to continuously have facilitative effects, it had better last for a period of time until the participants can internalize what they learn.
5. Low achievers get pleasure from literature reading. The attitudes toward and responses to literature reading have no differences between the experimental and control groups: being affirmative about the application of it in the reading class.
Based on the main findings of the study, some pedagogical suggestions are provided for EFL teachers.
1. The results from this study show that the cooperative learning approach can be an alternative for teaching L2 reading in the make-up course.
2. Teachers are not always the only source of students’ learning. Instead, they should sometimes play the role of consultants.
3. Teachers should teach the correct strategy of reading by demonstrating in class. Translating the text word by word in class will cause low achievers to have wrong perceptions about reading.
4. Textbooks are not the only teaching materials. Thus, teachers should adopt interesting materials to motivate students’ learning.
5. Prior to the applications of cooperative learning, students should be given correct concepts about the skills of group learning and discussion.
6. Teachers should give more concern to low achievers, pay attention to their improvement, praise them and encourage them very often.
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