Students may insist to understand every word while listening

being said. But one might misunderstand it as someone is pleading for the repeat of the sentence.

Sixthly, students think listening quite strenuous since it takes a considerable effort to get a complete comprehension. On the one hand, if the listeners find the topic interesting, they might be willing to listen incessantly. On the other hand, if the topic is dry and boring, they might lose interests soon. Therefore, no full comprehension is achieved. Listeners cannot choose the topics they prefer to, so the listening task itself is a challenge to the listeners.

Lastly, listeners become frustrated when they get stuck in understanding particular words or phrases. They will give up the whole listening process because they suppose that they should not miss any words in listening. Some students still believe that the most accurate listening is to grab the meaning of every word, not the chunk of the main ideas. In order to remedy this situation, students need to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness in listening and try their best to process the understood information. Table 2.1 summarizes these obstructions.

Table 2.1 Seven Obstructions of Efficient Listening Comprehension Listening Obstructions

1. Listeners cannot control the pace of verbal delivery.

2. Listeners cannot review the repeated words all the time.

3. Listeners have a little scope of vocabulary.

4. Listeners may not detect the signals that the speaker is moving from one point to another.

5. Listeners may lack contextual knowledge.

6. It can be tough for listeners to concentrate on a foreign language.

7. Students may insist to understand every word while listening.

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The Concepts of Cooperative Learning

Cooperative learning (CL) is considered one of the most outstanding and productive domains of theory, research, as well as practice in education. It is also one of the most frequently employed modes of active and vigorous learning. CL can be defined as the time when students strive together to achieve common goals of learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). Another definition of CL is that students congregate in small groups to assist each other to learn academic content (Slavin, 1996). Basically, CL relies on the concept that students start learning under social contexts (Adams and Hamm, 1994); they tend to interact with each other in such setting. Furthermore, CL benefits both students and teachers in the process of learning activities (Shimazoe and Aldrich, 2010).

CL can be categorized into central elements such as positive interdependence, individual accountability, face-to-face promotive interaction, appropriate use of collaborative skills (social skills), and group processing (Johnson & Johnson, 1990).

The category is shown in Figure 2.1. Previous findings on CL displayed positive relationship with students’ achievement (Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Slavin, 1989).

The use of CL may facilitate social and intellectual development and help students cultivate interpersonal skills (Cohen, 1984).

The success of CL lies in effective learning that happens through individuals’

interaction with their environment and companions. Through the interaction, students understand what they are learning, and what are expected from their peers (Adams &

Hamm, 1994). Webb (1985) discovered that students demonstrate signs of higher understanding when they share their ideas with their classmates and vice versa.

Interaction with peers provides students an opportunity to learn from each other’s knowledge, skills, and experience. Additionally, group discussions encourage students to handle counter-arguments, stimulate them to think beyond their limitation, and help

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students develop respect for diversity in their groups (Cooper, Robinson, & McKinney, 1993).

CL is not a new idea; it has undergone a considerable revival in educational research and practice (Slavin, 1980). CL is widely used as a form of active teaching mode from 1980’s, and continues to be an important approach for academic learning nowadays (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2007). Table 2.2 depicts the modes of CL employed by some scholars from 1960 to 1980. The teaching mode of CL in this research is referred to Numbered Heads Together by Kagan whose mode was prevalent in the middle 1980s.

Table 2.2 Modern Modes of Cooperative Learning (Johnson, Johnson & Stanne, 2000: 3-4)

Researcher- Developer

Date Method

Johnson & Johnson Mid 1960s Learning Together & Alone

DeVries & Edwards Early 1970s Teams-Games-Tournaments (TGT) Sharan & Sharan Mid 1970s Group Investigation

Johnson & Johnson Mid 1970s Constructive Controversy Aronson & Associates Late 1970s Jigsaw Procedure

Slavin & Associates Late 1970s Student Teams Achievement Divisions (STAD)

Cohen Early 1980s Complex Instruction

Slavin & Associates Early 1980s Team Accelerated Instruction (TAI) Kagan Mid 1980s Cooperative Learning Structures Stevens, Slavin, &

Associates

Late 1980s Cooperative Integrated Reading &

Composition (CIRC)

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The effect of CL in higher education has been recorded in much research for decades. Johnson & Johnson (1986) discovered that cooperative teams foster greater levels of thoughts. Teammates can keep information in mind longer than the other students that only work alone. This kind of active learning offers students an opportunity not only to get involved in discussion, but also to become critical thinkers.

Subsequently, students are more motivated to take responsibility to seek out answers on their own, and participate dynamically in class discussions (Totten et al., 1991).

The Application of Cooperative Learning in Teaching

Meta-analyses suggest that the merits of CL are available for students at all age, for all research domains, and for a diverse range of tasks inclusive of rote-decoding, retention, memory skills, and problem-solving ability (Johnson, Johnson & Maruyama, 1983； Johnson et al., 1981).

CL has been widely utilized in teaching subjects at school. There are several existing studies done on the promotion of math achievement (Nattiv, 1994), mathematic problem-solving ability (Tarim, 2009), and interaction in learning math (Leikin & Zaslavsky, 1997). The study of CL was also done on the school subject of chemistry (Oludipe & Awokoy, 2010). The result showed that the anxiety level of the students in CL group plunged. However, the anxiety level of the students in conventionally-lectured group soared after the treatment (post-test level).

Lord (2001) offered another evident benefit of using CL in teaching. He made a list of the 101 reasons for using CL in biology teaching. Among these reasons, the Reason 33 clearly pronounced that CL reduces anxiety in the science class (Kessler, Price & Wortman, 1985); the Reason 45 showed that CL significantly reduces science test anxiety (Neer, 1987). Moreover, CL has similar impact on special education and remedial students. In the teachers’ belief, CL equips struggling students with a more secure, less stressful learning environment (Jenkins et al, 2003). Furthermore, Bossert

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(1988) concluded that CL could embrace math, science education, computer training, language skill comprehension, mainstream of handicapped children, multiethnic education, and drug abuse prevention, etc.

About the four skills of language, reading and writing had been discussed in some research of CL (Stevens & Slavin, 1995). Nowadays, few directions for the listening activities of CL have been mentioned, let alone listening anxiety. With the upcoming demand of having better listening ability to meet the next-generation entrance exam of senior high schools, the harsh affective barrier, anxiety, ought to be resolved. That is the main purpose of this research.

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Figure 2.1 Central Elements of Cooperative Learning (Johnson, Johnson, &

Smith, 1991)

Positive interdependence

“We need contributions from each of my team members if we’re doing to succeed to succeed."”

Group processing

“Our team has to reflect on its performance and think together about how we might improve.”

Cooperative learning

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Cooperative Learning May Impede Anxiety and Improve Listening Comprehension Ability

In Duxbury’s research (2006), there was no significant correlation between foreign language anxiety and the practice of CL. This result was opposite to earlier findings. CL was thought to be a useful mode to reduce anxiety (Brown & Palincsar, 1989; Johnson & Johnson, 2009; O'Donnell et al., 1987). After Duxbury finished his research for four years, he worked with a Taiwanese researcher Tsai (2010) and conducted another research between foreign language anxiety and the practice of CL in Taiwan. The participants were not only students from one university in the United States of America, but also from three universities in southern Taiwan. No significant positive correlation was shown from the university in the USA. However, one of three universities in southern Taiwan evidenced a significant positive correlation.

Interestingly, the English teacher at that university happened to be a Taiwanese. Other two teachers at the other universities in southern Taiwan are native speakers from the USA.

Teachers in USA usually incorporate CL into the norm as part of their teaching modes. But teachers in Taiwan are not used to it (Duxbury & Tsai, 2010). When Taiwanese teachers put the mode of CL into their curricular design, students seem to be emancipated from the past rigid and dull one-way communication from teacher to student and feel much stress-free. This finding motivates the researcher, as a Taiwanese teacher, to carry out the teaching mode of CL in class to see if students’

listening anxiety can be reduced. Moreover, the research focus has been switched from general language anxiety to specific listening anxiety in this study.

It has been observed that students who are taught cooperatively are likely to present higher academic achievement, greater persistence, better advanced reasoning and critical thinking, deeper comprehension of materials that have been learned, more

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time on work and less misbehaviors in class, more intensive self-esteem, stronger intrinsic motivation, broader sympathy with others’ points of view, more beneficial and supportive relationships with peers, more right attitudes, and especially lower levels of anxiety and pressure (Felder & Brent, 1994: 6). Gokhale (1995) also checked the effect of team-based learning on test achievement of college students, and the result showed that students who are engaged to cooperative studies score better on tests. They get higher score on tests via critical thinking, compared with students who study individually.

Students are aware of the importance of how to foster better listening strategies. According to Vandergrift’s taxonomy (1997), strategies can be classified into three main parts: Metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and socio-affective strategies. In particular, two out of five socio-affective strategies are cooperation and lowering anxiety. By means of socio-affective strategies, learning begins to develop when learners cooperate with classmates. Furthermore, they can make good use of each other’s knowledge and experience to lower their anxiety level (Vandergrift, 1999). Vandergrift’s findings strongly suggested that the researcher incorporate these two factors to minimize listening anxiety and maximize listening comprehension ability. In addition, Vandergrift has two foci on the learner and the teacher respectively for cooperation and lowering anxiety. First, in the strategy of cooperation, students brainstorm together to share what are on their minds. Later, they do the listening tasks in the form of practices or questions. The teacher divides students into different groups and facilitates the in-group discussion for students to finish their listening tasks. Second, in the strategy of lowering anxiety, students are given an enjoyable, cozy and comfortable environment to do their listening tasks. In order to have such setting, perhaps teachers should have some relaxing activities to lower students’ anxiety before listening tasks are done. Table 2.3 is a quotation of the

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learners’ and teachers’ foci for cooperation and lowering anxiety from Vandergrift’s taxonomy:

Table 2.3 Socio-affective Strategies: Cooperation and Lowering Anxiety from Vandergrift’s Taxonomy (1997: 387-409)

Strategy Focus on the Learner Focus on the Teacher Cooperation Learners work together to pool

their comprehension.

The teacher asks learners to work in pairs or groups to discuss what they heard and find out from each other about what they understand about the text.

Lowering Anxiety

Learners try to relax before listening to the message.

The teacher has the learners close their eyes for one minute before the listening task and asks them to think of something that makes them feel happy.

Vandergrift (2003) defined socio-affective strategies as the techniques that listeners use to cooperate with others in order to verify understanding or to lower anxiety. Hence, the idea of integrating cooperative labors to reduce anxiety is not a new one. Vandergrift also commented that it is critical for listeners to fully control the anxiety, feel confident, sustain personal motivation, and increase listening competency in doing listening tasks. Vandergrift’s socio-affective strategies gave the directions to this research to both lower listening anxiety and improve listening comprehension ability.

O’malley and Chamot (1990) once taught ESL learners who had been exposed to metacognitive, cognitive, and socio-affective strategies for academic listening at an

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intermediate-level high school. Academic performance on the post-listening test was compared between two groups: The first group took instruction of metacognitive, cognitive, and particularly socio-affective strategies; the second group was set as the control group without any strategies. Results manifested that the treatment group excelled the control group in the post-listening test.

CL was one of the socio-affective strategies, and CL was adopted as the main teaching direction in this study. With the result that academic performance was promoted by socio-affective settings in O’malley and Chamot’s research, the listening comprehension ability in this research was expected to promote as well.

The Stages of Teaching Listening by Cooperative Learning

Both Underwood (1989) and Richards (2005) argued that a typical lesson sequence of listening has three stages: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening. The pre-listening stage prepares students for the practices of listening comprehension through activities to recall former knowledge, make predictions, and review key words. The while-listening stage concentrates on the comprehension through exercise that urges students to employ strategies such as selective listening, gist listening, sequencing, and the like. The post-listening stage particularly requires the students to give a response to what has been heard by stating their opinions.

Brown (2006) further indicated that pre-listening stage is supposed to contain two parts. The first part is that students should be given a chance to learn new vocabulary or sentence structures in listening. The second part is that students should be given an opportunity to trigger their prior knowledge. That is, listening comprehension should begin with what students have already known so that they can use their existing knowledge and skills to achieve the listening tasks.

During the while-listening stage, students will have a chance to verify and gauge their predictions. While-listening activities can be designed as guided

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note-taking, completion of a picture, table, or schematic diagram, and composing questions – any concrete activities that learners can do in listening so as to demonstrate ongoing monitoring of meaning (Rost, 2002).

The post-listening stage happens immediately after the while-listening stage (Rost, 2002). This stage may be the most vital part of the whole listening instruction.

Well-devised post-listening activities enable students to connect what they have heard to their former knowledge and experiences; to initiate critical listening as well as reflective thinking. Rost (2002) commented that post-listening activities can be incorporated into interactions such as comparing notes, making a summary with partners, and formulating responses or questions about what students have heard.

These ideas are in agreement with CL. Therefore, it is reasonable to merge CL into the post-listening stage.

Table 2.2 shows several different modes of CL that could be adopted as the framework of the post-listening stage. In terms of the practicability in this study, Numbered Heads Together, a procedure of CL contrived by Kagan (1989) was chosen to apply to the post-listening stage.

The steps of Numbered Heads Together are shown in Table 2.4.

Table 2.4 Steps of Numbered Heads Together By Kagan (1989: 13)

1. The teacher has students number off within groups, so that each student