The effect of cooperative task-oriented group activities on student achievement in English as a foreign language in large classes in Burkina Faso (West Africa)

Notwithstanding theoretical rationales for the benefits of cooperative learning and its widespread promotion in all subject matters, only a few studies have focused on cooperative group learning and second or foreign language acquisition. The results of these studies indicate that cooperative learning increases the quantity of language practiced, improves the quality of student talk, creates a positive affective climate, increases student motivation, and enhances thinking. However, most previous studies on group work in second language acquisition have been conducted in the United States in classes with no more than 35 students and where learners frequently received language input outside the classroom.; The purpose of this study was to investigate implementation and effectiveness of whole class teaching followed by task-oriented cooperative group activities in comparison with whole class teaching followed by individual work on learning English as a foreign language in large African classes with at least 80 students in each class. Subjects of the study were 166 students of two eighth grade classes in a public Burkinabe school (West Africa). The same teacher taught both classes the same grammar and vocabulary unit (Reported speech), using identical didactic materials. The experimental class used whole class and cooperative group activities whereas the control class was also taught by the traditional whole class method but followed by individual work. The effectiveness of each method for large classes was tested by an ANOVA statistical procedure performed on the English achievement scores on knowledge of grammar structure (Reported speech) of the participants identified as above-average, average, and below-average.; The findings suggest that both teaching methods can be successfully used in large African classes. The results also point to the fact that research in large African classes may be a complex and multifaceted process involving a number of economic and socio-cultural factors that need to be investigated. These findings indicate that using only group statistics in the contexts that differ so dramatically from the norm may be misleading.