The effects of cooperative learning activities on improving students’ perception and attitudes towards writing skills at international school, Vietnam National University Hanoi

ISSN: 1859-2171 TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 79 
THE EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING ACTIVITIES 
ON IMPROVING STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION AND ATTITUDES 
TOWARDS WRITING SKILLS AT INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, 
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HANOI 
Tran Thi Lan Huong 
VNU International School 
ABSTRACT 
With the aim to explore the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) activities on improving 
students’ perception and attitudes towards writing skills, the researcher employed two different 
teaching methods to teach two groups in 10 weeks: CL for experimental group and traditional 
method for control group. Traditional group learning method only puts students to sit and group 
without further assistance and careful structure to make group work become teamwork; whereas 
cooperative learning goes strictly with five elements including positive independence, individual 
accountability, quality group processing, explicit teaching of small group skills and teaching of 
social skills. A pre- and post- questionnaire were delivered to students at the beginning and the end 
of the experiment and the data was analyzed to find out to what extend each method affected 
students’ interest and perception about writing skill. Results from the analysis show that CL is an 
intriguing and effective way for students to learn writing skills. Learning in groups is generally 
more interesting and beneficial for their writing performance, especially for those steps like 
brainstorming ideas or editing essays. 
Key words: Cooperative Learning; CL; learning in groups; writing skills; process writing; 
perception; attitudes. 
Received: 10/4/2019; Revised: 27/5/2019; Approved: 31/5/2019 
HIỆU QUẢ CỦA HOẠT ĐỘNG HỌC HỢP TÁC ĐỐI VỚI THÁI ĐỘ, 
NHẬN THỨC CỦA SINH VIÊN KHOA QUỐC TẾ, ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA 
VỚI KĨ NĂNG VIẾT 
Trần Thị Lan Hương 
Khoa Quốc tế - ĐH Quốc gia Hà Nội 
TÓM TẮT 
Với mục đích tìm hiểu hiệu quả của việc sử dụng hoạt động học hợp tác, học nhóm để nâng cao 
nhận thức cũng như thái độ của sinh viên đối với kĩ năng viết, tác giả đã sử dụng hai phương pháp 
giảng dạy khác nhau cho hai nhóm sinh viên trong 10 tuần. Trước và sau khi tiến hành dạy thử 
nghiệm, tác giả phát ra hai bảng câu hỏi để phân tích tìm hiểu hiệu quả của từng phương pháp đối 
với nhận thức và thái độ của sinh viên đối với kĩ năng viết. Kết quả từ phân tích dữ liệu bảng hỏi 
cho thấy phương pháp học hợp tác là một phương pháp thú vị và có ích cho kĩ năng viết của sinh 
viên tại Khoa Quốc tế, Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội. Phương pháp mới không chỉ cải thiện khả năng 
động não lấy ý, chỉnh sửa bài viết của sinh viên mà còn làm tăng sự tự tin của sinh viên khi viết 
tiếng Anh. Nghiên cứu đóng vai trò như một gợi ý để cải thiện hoạt động giảng dạy kĩ năng viết tại 
Khoa cũng như là một nguồn thông tin tham khảo cho các giáo viên tiếng Anh ở các đơn vị khác 
tham khảo. 
Từ khóa: học hợp tác; học nhóm; viết quá trình; thái độ; nhận thức; kĩ năng viết. 
Ngày nhận bài: 10/4/2019; Ngày hoàn thiện: 27/5/2019; Ngày duyệt đăng: 31/5/2019 
Email: huongtran038@gmail.com 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.2019.06.564 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 80 
1. Introduction 
While teaching English at VNUIS, the 
researcher found that writing was the hardest 
skill for students, consequently, most of 
students were not actively involved in the 
lessons. Besides, their learning outcomes for 
this skill were very low. It has been widely 
believed that there are some sound reasons to 
take cooperative learning into 
implementation. Firstly, the most obvious 
benefit of CL for students falls into academic 
achievement. Working in groups enables 
learners to provide each other with 
information, suggestions, reminders and 
motivation [1]. They not only achieve better 
results, develop their thinking and leadership 
skills but also enjoy their learning with 
positive views towards other learners, good 
self-esteem and a sense of belonging to a 
group. CL strategy was found to be useful for 
both language education and other aspects 
such as motivational and communicative 
activities [2], good relationship with 
participants and stress overcoming [1]. 
Moreover, in CL classrooms, lower students 
learn much from strong partners because 
when working individually they may get 
stuck, but collaborating with better students 
enable them to understand the materials 
more easily [3]. 
In the second place, cooperative learning 
betters students socially and emotionally. CL 
helps learners to become better 
communicators and listeners, cooperative 
members as well as effective leader of a team. 
Furthermore, CL is also considered an 
effective remedy for educational problems by 
not only helping to improve academic results 
but also encouraging learners to become 
involved in social and academic settings. It 
also has good impact on the problem solving 
ability of children [2]. Children of lower 
ability who completed their work 
collaboratively with peers of higher ability 
had significant improvement in their 
performance. In addition, learning 
cooperatively enables learners to 
communicate with each other, which gives 
them opportunities to talk together about their 
work socially and collaboratively [4]. 
Discussion with peers is also a good way to 
make writing more meaningful and apparent 
and helps learners to become able to read 
their work critically. 
A number of research have confirmed the 
effectiveness of the method as follows: 
Ahangari and Samadian (2014)’s study [5] 
about the effect of cooperative learning 
activities on writing skills of Iranian EFL 
learners showed that the effect of cooperative 
learning activities improve the components of 
writing skills such as content, organization, 
vocabulary, language use and mechanics. The 
researchers suggested that writing 
performance can be improved through small-
group cooperative interaction among peers in 
a supportive and stress-reduced environment. 
Al-besher (2012) [6] carried out an 
experimental study on the effects of 
developing the writing skills of ESL students 
through the cooperative learning strategy for 
48 male students studying in the second year 
in the English language department at Al-
Qassim University in Saudi Arabia. The 
results showed that CL was beneficial for the 
pre-writing and revising stages of writing and 
less effective in the editing stage, which is 
concerned mainly with structure and 
mechanics. The attitudes and perceptions of 
students had also developed after their 
involvement in CL. In a study by Grami 
(2010) [7] to evaluate the success of 
integrating peer feedback in order to develop 
writing and social skills, the results showed 
that even though students in both groups did 
better in the test, students who involved in the 
peer feedback group outperformed the other 
group in all aspects of their writing. In 
Vietnam, Ms Le Tran (2009) [8] did a study 
to investigate the effectiveness of group-work 
activities to improve students’ writing skills at 
Tay Bac University. The results showed that 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 81 
the application of cooperative learning 
activities in writing lessons brought about 
desirable benefits to both teachers and 
students. They boosted students’ interest to 
learn and to work hard in writing lessons. The 
findings demonstrated that CL activities are 
not biased towards oral communication; it can 
be some good to any of four language skills. 
It was urgent that another teaching method 
should be found and applied to improve the 
situation of teaching writing at VNUIS and 
after a thorough examination, cooperative 
learning method was chosen to use. 
1.1 Cooperative Learning 
In language learning contexts, CL is defined 
as within-class grouping of students usually 
of differing level of foreign language 
proficiency who learn to work together on 
specific tasks for projects in such a way that 
all students in the group benefit from the 
interactive experience. Students work 
together to maximize their own and each 
other’s learning. According to Johnson and 
Johnson (2005) [9], CL is a teaching strategy 
in which small teams use a variety of learning 
activities to improve their understanding of a 
subject, each member is responsible for 
learning and helping classmates until they all 
understand and complete the assigned task. 
1.2 Five key elements of Cooperative 
Learning 
1.2.1. Positive interdependence 
According to Johnson, Johnson & Smith 
(1991) [10], group members understand that 
they need each other to fulfill the assigned 
tasks so they will contribute to the learning of 
group actively. This element is the heart of 
CL because the nature of cooperative learning 
is the improvement and maintenance of 
positive interdependence among team 
members. Students need to do activities in 
which they learn to depend on each other as 
they get help from one another. Instructors 
may structure positive interdependence by 
establishing mutual goals to maximize own 
and each other’s productivity, giving joint 
rewards, for example if all members achieve 
above the criteria each will receive bonus 
points, sharing resources with members’ 
different expertise and assigning roles of 
summarizer, encourager or elaborator. As a 
result, teamwork will help them learn 
valuable skills which will benefit them 
vocationally and socially. 
1.2.2. Face-to-face interaction 
Academic and language learning requires that 
students have opportunities to understand 
what they hear and read as well as express 
themselves in meaningful tasks [11]. Students 
are engaged in high level thinking skills such 
as analyzing, explaining, synthesizing and 
elaborating through cooperative learning. 
These interactive experiences are extremely 
valuable for students who are learning 
English as a second language because they 
naturally stimulate and develop the students’ 
cognitive, linguistic and social abilities. Thus, 
students should be taught and reinforced 
about the way to interact effectively with 
others. They gradually get to know and trust 
one another through teambuilding activities. 
Accepting and supporting one another and 
resolving conflicts constructively are other 
useful skills students attain when doing CL 
tasks. Also, teachers need to model positive 
interpersonal skills, get students practice the 
skills as well as encourage them to process 
the effectiveness of their performance. 
Focusing on social skill development will 
increase student’s achievement and enhance 
students’ employability, interpersonal 
relationships and general psychological 
health [9]. 
1.2.3. Individual accountability 
Jolliffe (2007) [13] mentions that each group 
member is accountable for fulfilling his or her 
part of the work. Each student needs to 
develop a sense of personal responsibility to 
learn and help the rest of the group to learn 
also. According to Stahl (1994) [14] the 
reasons why teachers put students in 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
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cooperative learning groups is all students can 
achieve higher academic results individually 
than when they study alone. Consequently, 
each student must be held individually 
responsible and accountable for doing his or 
her own share of the work and for learning 
what has been aimed to be learned. 
1.2.4. Social skill 
Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1993) [15] 
points out those groups cannot function well 
if students do not have and use the needed 
social skills such as leadership, decision-
making, trust-building, communication, and 
conflict-management skills. For the 
cooperative learning environment and 
precisely as academic skills and the learner 
should utilize the skills they have learnt in 
completing assigned activities. Stahl (1994) 
[14] asserts that students are placed in groups 
and expected to use appropriate social and 
group skills does not mean students will use 
automatically use these skills. In order to 
work as a group, students need to learn to 
cope with leadership, trust-building, 
encouragement, compromise and clarifying. 
Teachers need to describe expected behaviors 
and attitudes as well as assign students roles 
to make sure that consciously work on these 
behaviors in their groups. 
1.2.5. Group processing 
Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1993) [15] 
also state that groups need specific time to 
discuss how well they are achieving goals and 
maintaining effective working relationship 
among team members. Teachers need to 
ensure there is some structure to the group 
processing. This can be done by assigning 
such tasks as follows. First, teachers list three 
members that helped the group be successful. 
Second, one action that could be added to 
make the group even more successful 
tomorrow should be mentioned. Teachers 
need to monitor the groups and give feedback 
on how well the group is working together to 
the groups and the class as a whole. 
2. Research methods 
In order to investigate if cooperative learning 
influences positively on students’ perception 
and attitudes or not, a quasi-experimental 
research design was applied in the present 
study. The data from pre-and post- 
questionnaire were quantitatively analyzed to 
find out the answer. 
In this study, the researcher chose one class 
at random to be assigned to the experimental 
group while another class made up the 
control group. Each group consists of 18-19 
students aged from 19-20. The two groups 
have common features in terms of number, 
age, English level and motivation to study. 
These students also share characteristics with 
other groups of General English Program at 
VNU-IS. 
During the experiment time, the students in 
two groups received different treatment. 
The control group: The theory of cooperative 
learning was not taught and applied in this 
class. 18 students in the control group were 
taught about different genres of essay and 
then asked to practise the stages of writing 
individually in order to deal with the tasks 
given by the teacher. After the time limit for 
each stage was over, teachers had some 
feedbacks on students’ products before they 
continued with the next stage. They were also 
allowed to ask the teacher any questions or 
for any further information. 
The experimental group: The teacher put 19 
students in groups of 3/4 members and made 
them tackle a task collaboratively. They were 
also taught about different genres of essays 
and then asked to work in groups to practise 
the stages of writing in order to deal with the 
tasks assigned by the teacher. Students had to 
finish each stage in the time limit given by the 
teacher. 
Stage 1: Pre-writing - 20 minutes: During this 
stage, students worked collaboratively to 
discuss the meaning of the topic, brainstorm 
and contribute their ideas together, discuss 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 83 
appropriate and relevant vocabulary that 
could be used in the task. They could use 
dictionaries to check or find more suitable 
vocabulary. They together organized ideas 
and produced the outline for the essay. 
Stage 2: Drafting and writing stage - 30 
minutes: During this stage, each student wrote 
their own essay without asking other 
members for help. They were aware that in 
this stage, they should use the ideas and 
vocabulary they had prepared in pre-writing 
stage without paying any attention to 
grammatical and spelling mistakes. 
Stage 3: Revising stage - 20 minutes: The 
students revised their essays collaboratively. 
Each student put their essay in front of 
everyone and starts to read and offer 
comments. They were instructed that they 
had to make sure that they used appropriate 
vocabulary, rearranged any unclear 
sentences and paragraphs. They should not 
offer any comments on grammar and 
spelling mistakes in this stage. After getting 
feedbacks from peers, each student started 
writing the second draft. 
Stage 4: Editing stage - 20 minutes: Each 
draft was put in the centre of the group and 
students edited it collaboratively. They 
checked for any linguistic mistakes and 
accuracy including spelling, grammar and 
punctuation. Correcting errors and mistakes is 
the main priority in this stage. 
Questionnaire 
A questionnaire was distributed to both 
groups at the beginning and the end of the 
treatment to investigate students’ attitude 
toward general writing and cooperative 
learning in writing class. The questionnaire 
consisted of 20 statements in which 10 first 
statements were about general writing and the 
other 10 statements were about cooperative 
writing with a 5 point Likert scale (strongly 
agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly 
disagree). The questionnaire was adapted 
from Al-Besher (2012) [6]. The Al-Besher’s 
questionnaire was also used to examine the 
difference in the attitudes and perception of 
students towards writing skill and cooperative 
writing before and after the treatment. 
Data analysis 
To investigate the effects of different methods 
on students’ attitude towards writing skills 
and cooperative writing, the results of pre- 
and post-questionnaire filled by the both 
groups were computed using paired samples 
t-test. 
3. Results and discussion 
3.1 Analysis of questionnaire about writing 
skills in general 
With regard to questionnaire about writing 
skills in general, the results shown in Table 1 
indicate that the mean difference was 2.26, 
which was significant (paired t test, t=2.42, 
p=.026). Meanwhile, the mean difference 
achieved by students of the control group was 
1.2, which was not significant (t=2, p=.06). 
This means that the responses of students in 
the experimental group about writing skills in 
general improved after the treatment while 
those of students in the control group did not 
change. 
Table 1. Comparing pre- and post- responses of 2 groups concerning writing skills in general 
Statements about writing skills 
in general 
Mean N SD 
Mean 
Difference 
t p 
Experiment 
Pre –questionnaire 31.52 19 3.11 
2.26 2.42 .026 
Post – questionnaire 33.78 19 1.47 
Control 
Pre –questionnaire 29.88 18 1.96 
1.2 2.0 .06 
Post – questionnaire 31.11 18 1.77 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
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Table 2. Comparing the pre- and post-responses within two groups concerning writing skills in general 
Number Items 
Experimental 
group 
Control 
group 
Mean 
Difference 
p 
Mean 
Difference 
p 
1 The ease of writing skills .94 .026 .38 .06 
2 The importance of writing skills 1.05 .002 .38 .09 
3 The interest of writing skills 1.26 .000 .38 .09 
4 Time spent to understand the topic .78 .007 .77 .004 
5 Making outlines before writing .42 .21 .72 .038 
6 Following the prepared outline when writing .68 .008 .27 .42 
7 Correcting grammatical and spelling mistakes when writing .73 .012 .16 .38 
8 Revising essays before finishing them .42 .11 .77 .035 
9 Editing vocabulary when finishing the essay 1.57 .000 .66 .035 
10 Editing grammar when finishing the essay 1.73 .000 .05 .77 
Table 3. Comparing pre- and post- responses of 2 groups concerning cooperative writing activities 
Statements about cooperative 
writing 
Mean N SD Mean Difference t p 
Experiment 
Pre –questionnaire 27.05 19 2.77 
5.94 6.97 .000 
Post – questionnaire 33.0 19 1.94 
Control 
Pre –questionnaire 26.44 18 3.12 
1.22 1.38 .183 
Post – questionnaire 27.66 18 3.27 
Table 2 presents that, in general, after the 
experiment the attitudes of students in the 
experimental group toward writing skills 
improved remarkably in almost all aspects. 
As shown in Table 2, they had the most 
improvement in the attitudes toward editing 
vocabulary and grammar before submitting 
the essay and the importance and the interest 
of writing skills with all mean differences 
above 1.0. Likewise, there was an 
improvement in the perception of students in 
the control group about time spent for 
understanding the topic before writing and 
editing grammar before submitting with both 
mean differences being .77. Especially, while 
the attitudes of the experimental group toward 
making outlines before writing and revising 
the essay did not change, the control group 
changed positively. 
3.2 Analysis of questionnaire about 
cooperative writing 
With regard to questionnaire about 
cooperative learning, the results indicated in 
Table 3 means that although the responses of 
students in the experimental group about 
cooperative writing were not very good at the 
beginning of the course, then they improved 
after 10 weeks taking part in cooperative 
learning classrooms. In the meanwhile, the 
attitudes and perception of students in the 
control group toward cooperative learning did 
not change. 
Table 4 presents that, in general, after the 
treatment students in the experimental group 
had better attitudes and perception toward all 
aspects of cooperative writing (p-value for all 
items < 0.05). They recognized that 
cooperative writing was a good way for them 
to learn writing effectively (p value for item 
1< 0.05). They also agreed that doing stages 
of writing with friends was more interesting 
and beneficial for their writing and wished to 
have more chances to take part in more 
cooperative activities (p value for item 
2,3,4,10< 0.05). However, the attitudes of 
students in the control group toward 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
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cooperative learning did not change much (p value for most items >0.05). At the beginning of the 
course, they neither thought that learning in groups was an effective way to learn writing skills 
nor wished to take part in cooperative learning (p value for item 1,10 > 0.05) and then after the 
course, they kept their opinion unchanged although they agreed that learning in groups was 
somehow good for editing essays, improving grammar and being more confidence in speaking 
and writing (p value for item 4,6,7 <0.05). 
Table 4. Comparing the pre-test and post-responses within two groups concerning cooperative writing 
Number Items 
Experimental 
group 
Control 
group 
Mean 
Difference 
p 
Mean 
Difference 
p 
1 The effectiveness of cooperative learning 1.89 .000 .33 .11 
2 Planning a topic with friends 1.0 .005 .05 .79 
3 Revising an essay in groups 1.1 .000 .22 .21 
4 Editing an essay in groups 1.47 .000 .61 .012 
5 
Improvement in critical thinking thank to 
cooperative learning 
.57 .023 .05 .85 
6 
Confidence in speaking and writing thank to 
cooperative learning 
1.15 .000 1.05 .002 
7 
Acquiring vocabulary better thank to cooperative 
learning 
1.15 .001 .5 .04 
8 Improving grammar thank to cooperative learning .84 .014 .27 .35 
9 
Getting higher scores in exams thank to cooperative 
learning 
.89 .006 .27 .096 
10 
Preference to be involved in more cooperative 
learning 
1.94 .000 .33 .13 
4. Conclusions and implications 
4.1. Summary of the findings 
Concerning students’ attitudes toward 
writing skills and cooperative writing, the 
findings reveal that there were positive 
changes in their attitudes. At the beginning 
of the course, students did not think that 
writing skills was important or interesting, 
but after 10 week treatment, their opinion 
changed for the better. At the end of the 
course, students also had good perception 
about the stages of writing. For example, 
they were better aware of the priority of 
each stage such as checking content of 
writing during revising stage and checking 
accuracy during editing stage. With regard 
to cooperative writing, there was also 
improvement in students’ attitudes after the 
experiment. Most of students agreed that 
cooperative learning was a good method to 
learn writing skill and they preferred to be 
involved in more cooperative learning in 
the future. 
4.2. Recommendations 
The recommendations are combining 
traditional approach and cooperative 
approach, training students carefully about 
cooperative learning, assigning groups of 
different abilities and getting students to write 
group’s diary. Since each approach has its 
own strengths, teachers should combine 
flexibly traditional and cooperative approach 
basing on the specific teaching context to 
have the most effectiveness. 
Besides, when cooperative approach is 
applied, students need to be carefully trained 
about cooperative learning because without 
training cooperative learning will not be 
beneficial. Students should understand that 
cooperative learning means encouraging each 
other sharing responsibility with each other 
and trusting each other. They should also be 
Tran Thi Lan Huong TNU Journal of Science and Technology 199(06): 79 - 86 
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instructed how to work collaboratively such 
as how to brainstorm together, how to discuss 
an essay, how to give comments and get 
feedbacks. 
However, in order to avoid the situation that 
some students rely too much on other group’s 
member, a group should have a diary in 
which each member’s contribution in each 
lesson is recorded. This is also a good way to 
remind students of their responsibility when 
doing group work. 
4.3. Limitations of the study 
The study is a relatively small scale one with 
37 writing papers from two groups and 37 
questionnaire respondents. This may be a 
hindrance which prevents the researcher from 
getting more precise findings related to 
cooperative learning. Secondly, the 
experiment was just carried out with 
intermediate students, not students of all 
levels, thus the results cannot be generalized 
to all EFL students at VNU-IS. 
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