Impact of Collaborative Learning in Acquisition of English as a Second Language - With Special Reference to the First Year Arts Students, University of Jaffna

Abstract

When learners have lack of exposure or access to L2, acquiring it will be a challenging task. It has been observed in the ESL classrooms that collaborative learning has always been a form of scaffolding for the learners. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the effectiveness of collaborative learning in the acquisition of English Language skills of the Tamil speaking learners at the tertiary level. The study was carried out for one semester with 43 first year students from the Faculty of Arts. For this research, informal interviews, questionnaires, classroom observation, pre-test and post-test have been used to collect data. Qualitative and descriptive methodologies have been employed. At the end of the study, the results showed improvement in the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills of the ESL learners.