A comparative study of Grade 6 students' academic achievement and motivation for learning English as a foreign language under cooperative teaching method and traditional teaching method at Watbangchalongnai School, samut Prakan, Thailand

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find if cooperative teaching methods in Watbangchalongnai School, Samut Prakan, Thailand, would enhance Grade 6 students’ English academic achievement, measured by their abilities in grammar, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. The study also sought to measure students’ motivation for learning English as a foreign language (EFL). For the purpose of the study, the researcher conducted an intervention experiment for 12 weeks, from December 2018 to March 2019, in which two intact Grade 6 groups were chosen, one as experimental group and the other as control group. During the experiment, subjects in the experimental group (39 students) attended classes based on cooperative teaching method. The control group (39 students), on the other hand, did not carry out any additional activities to traditional teaching method. Tocontrol as many variables as possible, the number of classes per week, duration of each class and components to be taught were all the same in both groups. In order to test the effectiveness of such strategy, two quantitative tools for data collection were used to compile the findings of the study. To begin with, a pre-test and a post-test were administered to measure students’ academic achievement in learning EFL before and after the treatment. Afterwards, a questionnaire was distributed to both groups inorder to measure students’ motivation for learning EFL. The results of the independent samples t-test on a difference of academic achievement revealed a significant difference between the two groups. The sample means showed that subjects in the experimental group increased their academic achievement from the pre-test to the post-test significantly more than subjects in the control group.Results regarding motivation for learning EFL failed to reveal a significant difference between the two groups. The sample means showed that subjects in the experimental group demonstrated high mean scores on motivation for learning EFL, which were statistically similar to those shown by subjects in the control group. Based on the research findings, recommendations for students, teachers, administrators and future researchers are provided.