Exploring Cooperative Learning Method to Enhance Speaking Skills Among School Students

One of the current challenges in English Language education is to produce learners who can speak confidently, fluently, accurately and to carry out presentations without anxiety or feeling nervous. The aim of this study was to investigate how cooperative learning could assist and guide students in speaking skills. This paper reports the effectiveness of cooperative learning method to enhance speaking skills among school students. This study used cooperative learning together with the Interaction Theory as well as group work. The target group consists of 36 Form One students. They were interviewed using structured questions to find out the methods that they used while completing their tasks. The finding proved that through cooperative learning, learners had social interaction among themselves through groupwork such as discussions, rephrasing, pronunciation, explanations, elaborations and motivating peers before the actual speaking or presentation session. The findings proved that students enjoyed cooperative learning and carried out presentations without feeling nervous. The findings further showed that students learnt to depend on each other to complete the task which is also one of the main principles of cooperative learning. The students also said that cooperative learning was a fun way of learning English language as it was student centered with less teacher intervention.