In this chapter, I describe my use of cooperative learning in the mid-1990s when I was teaching English to students in their final year at a secondary school in Singapore. I will first discuss how I came to learn about cooperative learning. Then, I will illustrate how I set up the classroom for cooperative learning and how I used it in the…

Investigates out-of-class academic collaboration among students at a polytechnic in Singapore as they worked on collaborative assignments. Data were collected via a questionnaire completed by 232 students, interviews were conducted with 10 lecturers, observations were made of eight student groups as they collaborated on teacher-required work…

An essay on use of cooperative learning (CL) techniques in the second language classroom looks at the benefits of CL, examines the current status of their use, particularly in Singapore, and makes recommendations for implementing CL techniques in second language reading instruction. The discussion begins with a review of literature on group…

Group activities developed in Western countries have been advocated for use in foreign and second language learning internationally. This article reports the views of 31 second language educators from six Southeast Asian countries (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) on the appropriateness of group…