ARTICLE+REFLECTION+BY+ESRA+İDİL

LBPP-LIA PAKUAN BOGOR The article is about the investigation on how the Cooperative Learning Method improves young learners’ reading ability. In the research told in the the paper, Cooperative Learning was implemented so that the children can work together to achieve their goal. The content Map is used as an organizer to memorize the information from the reading. (Novak, 1991) acocrding to the results of the research, Cooperative Learning encouraged the children to work together to achieve the and in turn built the children’s confidence and understanding towards the reading so that their reading ability was improved. As all we know young learners have short attention and concenration span but they are much more enthusiastic than any of us. As they can think abstract terms, they can’t decide what to learn so the responsibility of the teacher increases dramatically. They may not understand the rules but they know that they are there to be obeyed and they can help to nurture a feeling of security.(Scott and Ytreberg, 2004) And most importantly, they will learn best when they are enjoyin themselves.(Scott and Ytreberg, 2004) In todays’ schools, there is a big problem of big gaps between the levels of students. While some of them get the idea very well, the others can’t understand it that’s why only a small part of them get successful. However, in the article, Cooperative Learning is showed as a solution for this problem. It is said that Cooperative Learning focuses on the achievement of the whole group. Therefore, the Cooperative Learning is goal oriented, encouraging every member in a learning group to contribute to the group’s success.
 * ARTICLE REFLECTION BY ESRA İDİL **
 * NAME OF THE ARTICLE: ** IMPROVING YOUNG LEARNERS’ READING ABILITY THROUGH COOPERATIVE LEARNING
 * NAME OF THE AUTHOR: ** MARIA FLORENTINE PALAR
 * ABSTRACT OF THE ARTICLE: **
 * GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: **

The language experience approach encourages classroom teachers to create language environment which is practical and motivating at the same time.(Smith, 1994) cooperative Learning is the insructional use of small group so that students work together to maximize their own and each others’ learning. within cooperative learning groups, students discuss the material to be learned with each other, help and assist each other to understand it, and encourage each other to learn hard. Students work in small mixed-ability learning teams. Each student in the team is responsible not only for learning the material being taught, but also for helping teammates learn. The usage of Concept Maps helped the process of learning very much. In the research, to prove the significance of the improvement of young learners’ reading ability, “Reading Task Scoring Sheet” and “Observation Notes” are used. A “Questionnaire” is used to determine young learners’ enjoyable experience in learning the reading skill through Cooperative Learning. There are two kinds of tests conducted in the research. The first one is the pre test, and the second one is the post test. The pre test was conducted at the beginning of the cycle to determine students’ initial reading abilities before given the treatment of Cooperative learning. the post test was used at the end of the cycle after the children have been given the treatment for three times, to determine students’ improvement in comparison with that of the pre test’s. The questionnaire was conducted to learn about students’ motivation and confidence before, during, and after the treatment. If we take the pre test into consideration, the average of the pre test shows that the class had the criteria of fair. After the treatment the condition changed. The average of the post test shows that the class had the criteria of good. We can conclude that after the treatment, the children’s condition had improved. The first treatment was the least successful one, the second treatment was average, and the last, namely third treatment was the most successful one in terms o instruction giving, group processing, and task completion. For the questions of the questionnaire, only the important questions will be highlighted here such as “if they like reading activities in the classroom”, “whether they like the appearance of the organizer: the map”, “whether they liked their mapping experience”, “whether the Cooperative Learning activity is useful for them to learn English.” All of the questions above, were answered “yes” which shows us the score of the investigation.

For the conclusion part, we see; the Cooperative Learning Method; ü improved students’ reading ability ü encouraged children to work together to achieve their learning objective ü encouraged children to give in their best effort to achieve group’s goal ü encouraged young learners to work on their social interactions ü helped us to see young learners learn best when they are enjoying themselves, the best students are the happiest students ü helped us to see without a tool to organize their thoughts, young learners will not be able to have the motivation to understand the content of the reading text. Alongside knowledge and skills in the foreign language, excellent classroom management skills are needed to keep everyone on task and learning.(Cameron, 2001) ın the article, the investigation of Cooperative Learning provides a good solution to this issue, because students are expected to work together as a group, they stimulate each other, none of them is out of task and as they enjoy themselves during the activities, they are eager to learn. Also, it was stated at the very beginning of the article that, young children can’t think abstract terms therefore they can’t analyse or discuss meta-language(grammar especially). Thus, while teaching vocabulary and grammar, reading activities might be used via Cooperative Learning. students help each other and nobody is left behind ecpecially in such important topics. There is no need to rush into technical rules and labels that will confuse young learners. For their ultimate success, it seems likely to be far better to give children a sound basis in using the language, while encouraging curiosity and talk about patterns and contrasts in and between languages, and introducing grammatical metalanguage slowly and meaningfully. A teacher will see the language patterns that occur in tasks, stories, songs, rhymes and classroom talk, and will have a range of techniques to bring these patterns to the children’s notice.( Pinter, 2006 - Cameron 2001) All these issues are consistent with the ideas told in this article.
 * EVALUATION **