Cooperative Learning: The Effects of Summarizing on Iranian EFL Writing Improvement

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of cooperative learningon improving Iranian EFL learners’ writing. To this end the researcher applied a summarizing tactic. Twenty students studying English as a foreign language in an Institute at intermediate level in Boroujerd, Iran were chosen. An experimental design was utilized for the present study. The instruments used in thestudy were; agroup writing as pretest at the first session and group writing as posttest at the lastsession.Treatment lasted about two months, twice a week. Paired and independent sample t-testswere used to answer the research question. The results of the pretest and posttest in data analysisthrough statistical procedure such as Paired T-Test confirmed the superiority of the experimentalgroups. The finding supports the argument regarding to this fact that group instruction while summarizing helped to improve group writing, resulting in the rejectionof the null hypotheses.

Keywords:

Cooperative learning , Content-based instruction , collaborative learning , summarizing