ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING IN AN HONORS FOREIGN-LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Oral proficiency and communication are the principal desired outcomes of today's foreign language (L2) instruction. Recent research in theor etical linguistics has recommended increased use of the target languag e, the use of cognitive, metacognitive, and prosocial strategies, and cooperative learning to help achieve oral proficiency and communicatio n within the classroom. This paper describes a 21-day research action project involving two Spanish II Honors classes and several cooperativ e learning techniques. The project included 1) assessing student attit udes toward participating in group work as identified by before and af ter questionnaires; 2) implementing a variety of specific cooperative learning activities; 3) determining what successes and problems occurr ed in the cooperative learning groups and activities; and 4) observati ons of the classroom activities by colleagues. Four cooperative learni ng models were incorporated into the project: Student Team Learning, G roup Investigation, Think-Pair-Share, and Three-Step Interview. Result s suggested that students' actions throughout the term of the study an d their responses to the final questionnaire all validate the use of c ooperative learning as an effective strategy in the honors foreign lan guage class. Since there was no control group, the findings are of nec essity qualitative and subjective. However, this makes them no less va lid. The study demonstrates unequivocally that cooperative learning is an effective methodology in the honors foreign language classroom.