UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ VIEWS ABOUT THE APPLICATION OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN COMMUNICATIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SKILLS CLASSES

: the main purpose of the study is to investigate students’ views about the implementation of collaborative learning in English classes. Collaborative learning helps students to improve their English language performance. To achieve this objec-tive, observation and questionnaires were employed. The quantitative data were analyzed using percentage and frequency. Theme analysis technique was used to analyze the qualitative data. The result of the study indicated that most students’ applied collaborative learning, but the type of collaborative learning they are applying is not collaborative learning. Most of the teachers simply make their students to sit side by side to talk with each other as they do their individual assignments, and some teachers assign a task to groups. Then, one or two of the group members do the work and the other group members get equal credit. Although each of these is important in collaborative learning, they do not qualify collaborative learning rather traditional group learning. In addition to this, some students were not playing their roles as they are expected. Teachers and other concerned bodies ought to deliver sorts of orientations to the students about the importance of collaborative learning to maximize students’ views before implementing collaborative learning.


Background of the study
Communicative language teaching marks the beginning of a major paradigm shift within language teaching in the twentieth century, one whose ramifications continued to be felt today (Richards and Rogers, 2001).The general principals of communicative language are today widely accepted around the world.Collaborative learning can help students to be critical thinkers, creators and problem solvers.
Although collaborative language learning instigates outside of language teaching, it is compatible with many of the assumptions of communicative language.It has become a popular and relatively uncontroversial approach to the organization of classroom teaching in many parts of the world.As Putnam (1997) states cooperative learning has emerged as a powerful method for fostering children's achievement and sociopersonal development in today's heterogeneous classroom.Collaborative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject.Each member of a team is responsible for not only learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn and forming an atmosphere.
Implementing collaborative learning can help to bring sound language learning process.It also helps to achieve sound education as well (Jakobs, 1988).Consequently, university students' feeling about the implementation of collaborative learning is worthwhile to see whether they have enough awareness to implement it or not.The reason is that the concept of learning and the roles students play are inseparable and two faces of a coin to implement collaborative learning effectively.Students who are learning English are supposed to be positive and active to engage in collaborative learning since it requires students to engage in-group activities that increase learning and indicates other important dimensions.
According to Brady and Tsay (2010), students who participate equally in-group activities exhibited a higher like hood of receiving high-test scores and course grades at the end of the semester.In the current research context, there are studies about the implementation of group work at secondary school levels (Birhanu G/Michael, 2000).group work organization in grade eleven.As far as the researcher's experience and reading is concerned, there is no study about university students' perception about the implementation of collaborative learning in English classes.As a result, the researcher is interested to assess students' perception about the implementation of collaborative learning at Addis Ababa Science and Technology University.
According to Birhanu (2000), students have an attempt of employing collaborative learning.The researcher stated that students fail to interact successfully.This may be due to their negative views towards the implementation of it.How about university students' perception about the implementation of collaborative learning in English classes?It was the assumption that the researcher is inspired to assess students' feelings about the implementation of collaborative learning.

Objectives of the study 1.2.1 General objective
The general objective of this study was to assess students' perceptions about the implementation of collaborative learning.

Specific objectives
The specific objectives of this study includes the following points -To assess the types of collaborative learning that students employ during collaborative learning -To assess students' roles during collaborative learning -To identify students' perception about the implementation of collaborative learning

Research Methodology
The main purpose of the current study is to explore students' views about the implementation of collaborative learning in communicative English skills II classes.
The study employed a descriptive method because the researcher was interested to assess the students' perception about the implementation of collaborative learning, type(s) of collaborative learning they apply and their roles during the process of implementing collaborative learning and classroom activities they employ during the process.

Study area
The study was conducted at Addis Ababa Science and Technology University, with special reference to first year engineering students who took the course communicative English skills II.

Methods of data collection
To collect data from the respondents, the researcher used questionnaire and classroom observation.

Questionnaire
Questionnaire is extremely flexible and can be used to gather information on almost any topic involving large or small numbers of people (Abiy et al 2009).Students' questionnaire contained both close ended and open-ended questions.The main purpose of the open-ended questions was to elicit more information from the concerned research participants.This is because open-ended questions can provide rich information since respondents feel comfortable to express their feelings and opinions (Ranjit, 1996).

Observation
Classroom observation was conducted to check whether students play their roles during the implementation of collaborative learning in response to the questionnaire in the classroom while the actual class lesson was going on.

Sampling techniques
Three sections were selected randomly as subjects for the questionnaire.This made 120 students.Random sampling as it, according to Bailay (1994), delivers chances for everyone to be a member of the sample.

Data collection procedure
During the process of collecting data, the following procedures were followed.
All selected sections were observed two times each.Along with the co observer, the researcher observed each classroom two times and put (√) for activities that were practiced and (X) for activities that were not practiced.
Second, the questionnaires were administered to a sample of 120 students after explaining the purpose of the study.The researcher did the distribution of the Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0) questionnaire in collaboration with classroom subject teachers in each section.All the student participants returned the questionnaire after they filled and completed the questions during the class period.

Data analysis methods
In this descriptive survey study, quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis were used for the reasons that the quantitative as well as qualitative data were In short, the data gathered through observations were described qualitatively in order to support the data gathered through questionnaire.Finally, the findings obtained by the use of these tools were summarized and concluded.Recommendations were also given based on the conclusions that were drawn.

Data Analysis and Discussion
In this part of the research, an attempt has been made to analyze and interpret the data gathered from first year students of Addis Ababa Science and Technology University.Three data gathering tools were used.These were questionnaire and observation.
Accordingly, data obtained from these tools were interactively presented and analyzed in the following organizational scheme.First, students' understanding and experience about the implementation of collaborative learning were analyzed and discussed.Then, students' attitude about the implementation of collaborative learning was followed.Finally, students' roles during the implementation of collaborative learning was analyzed and discussed.Data from questionnaires were discussed in the order they are put above.In addition, the data gathered through the three tools were presented in any order as relevant as follow.As can be seen from Table -1 for item 1, 90(75%) of the students said their teacher widely implements collaborative learning, 18(15%) of them said their teacher widely implements competitive learning and 12(10%) of them said their teacher implements individualistic learning.Regarding to the question "How does your teacher implement collaborative learning in your class", majority of the students replied their teacher makes them to sit side by side with each other as they do their individual assignments.

Students' understanding and experience on the implementation of collaborative learning
However, as to Johnson, and Johnson (1987) collaboration is not having students sit side by side at the same with each other as they do their individual assignments.Some of students said their teacher assigns a task to a group.Then, one or two of the group members do the work, and the rest of the group members get equal credit.Nevertheless, very few of them said their teacher makes them work together toward a common goal.
From this, it is possible to say that even though both the teachers and students mostly implement collaborative learning, they are not clear how to implement collaborative learning and the difference between collaborative group learning with the traditional one.As can be showed from to Gebeyaw (2007), some students feel that the class time is best spent hearing from the teacher rather than working with students who, they believe, known as little as themselves.As indicated from Table 5 above, 50 (42%) of the students simply listen to their teacher, 38 (32%) of them work collaboratively on tasks with their group members and 32 (26%) of them participated actively.This indicated that students are not that much aware about the role of collaborative learning to improve their language skills.As can be reported from Table 5 above, 84 (70%) of the student respondents mostly prefer their teacher to implement learner centered method in their classroom; nevertheless, 36 (30%) of them mostly prefer traditional instructional method.
The response of students for the open-ended question "What is the reason to prefer active instructional methods like cooperative group learning?" is the following.Most of them explained that the active instructional learning or active learning helps them to develop their oral communicative skills, to share their experience, knowledge and skill, to make them to avoid stress, and develop confidence.It also helps them to be encouraged to participate actively and to learn best from their mistakes.According to Table 6 above, most of the students (83%) of them responded that their teachers form heterogeneous groups and 20(17%) of them responded that their teachers form homogeneous groups.The data indicated that teachers give emphasis for heterogeneous type of group formation during the implementation of collaborative learning.As Table 7 above shows, (70%) of the students confirmed that their teacher implements collaborative learning successfully, but 46(35%) of them said that their teacher does not implement collaborative learning effectively.As can be seen from students' learning effective and meaningful.They also indicated that collaborative leaning helps students to learn from each other, so it should be sustainable.Finally, they pointed out that there should be stable membership during collaborative learning because group formation is time consuming.

Key: SA-Strongly agree (5) D-Disagree (2)
A-Agree ( 4) SD-Strongly disagree (1) Un-Undecided (3) As can be seen from Table 10, with regard to item 1, 90 (75) of the students strongly agreed and 26 (22%) of them agreed respectively that collaborative learning helps them to prepare for their learning.The mean value also inclines to strongly agree (i.e.4.7).For item 2, 40 (33%) of the students agreed and 20 (17%) of them strongly agreed respectively.However, 16 (18%) of them disagreed and 34 (28%) them strongly disagreed respectively that using collaborative learning is likely to create too many problems in their class with the mean value of 2.9.Concerning to item 3, 46 (38%) of the students agreed and 38 (32%) of them strongly agreed.Nevertheless, 11(9%) of them undecided, 12 (10%) of them disagreed and 13 (11%) of them strongly disagreed for the given statement.This implied that if the teacher uses collaborative leaning, most students expect other group members to do their work.Similarly, the mean value approximates to agree 3.7.This indicated that most of the group members need their group leader to help them, summarize what they did and finally present it.
Regarding to item 4, 38(31%) of the respondents do not supposed and 36 (30%) of them do not strongly thought that their teacher cannot implement collaborative learning successfully.In other words, 31% of them agreed and 30% of them strongly disagreed respectively that their teacher could implement collaborative learning successfully.Majority of the students agreed that their teacher could implement collaborative learning magnificently.
With regard to item 5, 55 (46%) of the students strongly agreed, 18 (15%) of them agreed to statement 5. On the other hand, 2(1%) of them undecided, 15 (13%) of them disagreed and 30 (25%) of them strongly disagreed that most of the time they would like to work alone than in collaborative learning with the mean value of 3.5.This is an evidence to say that majority of the students prefer competitive and individualistic learning than collaborative learning.
As can be seen from item 6 of the above table, 60(50%) of the students strongly agreed and 48 (40%) of them agreed respectively to the statement.However, 7(6%) of Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0) them disagreed and 5 (4%) of them strongly agreed that collaborative learning promotes friendship among them.
With regard to item 7, 40(33%) of the students strongly agreed, 31(26%) of them agreed respectively.However, (7%) of them did not decide with the statement, and 1(1%) of them strongly disagreed that their teacher lacks personal commitment to use collaborative learning.Finally, the mean inclines to undecided with the value of 3.25.
About item 8, 76(63%) of the students strongly agreed, and 28(23%) of them agreed respectively to the statement.However, 9(8%) of them undecided and 7 (6%) of them strongly disagreed that collaborative learning develops their oral communicative language skills.The mean value, which is 4.3, shows that most of the students agreed up on the given statement.As can be seen from item 9, with regard to the statement collaborative learning enables students to learn from one other.80(67%) of the students strongly agreed and 33(28%) of them agreed to the stated statement respectively with the mean value of 4.5.
According to item 10, 47(39%) of the students strongly agreed and 39(33%) of them agreed; However, 14 (12%) of them disagreed and 20(16%) of them strongly disagreed that collaborative learning is time consuming.Here the mean value is 3.6, which inclines to the agree scale value.Finally, 34 (28%) of the students strongly agreed, 61 (51%) of them agreed to item 11.However, 2(1%) of them, 3(3%) of them disagreed and 20(17%) of them strongly disagreed that students become frustrated to discuss with their friends to improve their language performance.The mean value also shows that most of the students get frustrated to discuss with their group members.participation.Similarly, in the observed sections, the researcher has observed that all of the observed teachers were encouraging their students' participation.Moreover, the mean value inclines to always (i.e.4.59).

Students' roles during collaborative learning
Finally, concerning to the last item, 11 (34%) of the students said 'sometimes'; 38 (32%) of them said 'mostly'; 11 (9%) of them said 'rarely', and 7(6%) of them said 'not at all' that their teacher evaluates their achievement at the end of the lesson.In addition, the mean value inclines to 'sometimes' (i.e.3.49).

Conclusions and Recommendations
This section consists of conclusions and recommendations of the research results.
After the conclusions, some possible recommendations are given.The present study, as mentioned in previously was intended to investigate students' views about the implementation of collaborative learning.For this purpose, three types of data gathering instruments (questionnaire and classroom observation) were used.The data gathered through the instruments were presented, analyzed and discussed in the previous section.Based on the analysis and discussion, the following conclusions and recommendations were made.

Conclusions
The data obtained from students questionnaire indicated that majority of the students have positive feeling about collaborative learning; however, some of them are resistant to implement collaborative learning.They expect other students to do the work and put their names, and some students become frustrated to discuss with their group members.On the other hand, some other students prefer to work alone than in collaborative learning.
The result obtained from all of the three instruments indicates that most of the students do not play their roles during the implementation of collaborative learning.
For instance, most student were not interested to work collaboratively with their group members, plan, monitor and evaluate their learning, provide feedback, reinforcement and support to their group members, accept other students' weakness and strength.In addition, some teachers were not playing their roles as they are expected.For example, Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0) they do not arrange the class into small groups and evaluate their students' achievement at the end of the lesson despite they were encouraging their students' participation.
Birhanu tried to see collaborative learning focusing on group work organization of grade eleven.On the other hand, Seifu W/yohhanes (2005) conducted a study about the implementation of group activities.Wondwosen Tesfamichael (2008) investigated an assessment about oral group lessons in promoting cooperative learning focusing on Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0) gathered.The quantitative data were treated by counting and converting the tallies into percentage and explaining that in line with the research objectives.Mean values were also used to analyze and interpret data regarding students' attitude, roles and classroom activities they employed during the implementation of collaborative learning.The mean value was calculated by multiplying the number of respondents and the scale value divide by total number of respondents.(I.e. mean (X) = number of respondents (f) x scale value Total number of the respondents )

Table 1
above of item 2, 100 (84%) of the students are interested to work with their classmates during collaborative learning and 20(16%) of them are not interested to work with their classmates during collaborative learning.As Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0)

Table 3
As Table3above, 48 (40%) of the respondents explained their teacher mostly implements informal collaborative learning, and 46 (38%) of them said their teacher implements base group collaborative learning.From this, it is possible to conclude both informal and base group collaborative learning are implemented.

Table 8
The students' responses for the open-ended statement "Write anything else you would like to say about the implementation of collaborative learning."They discussed that collaborative learning should be encouraged and continued, because it makes Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0)

Content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0) of
them do not provide feedback, reinforcement and support for their group members.Moreover, the mean value inclines to rarely (i.e.2.25).The data show that most of the students rarely provide feedback, reinforcement and support for their group members.
that their teacher employs classroom activities which are appropriate to the objectives.About item 9, 74 (62%) of the students said 'always', 43 (36%) of them said 'mostly' and 3(2%) of them said 'sometimes' that their teacher encourages their Содержимое доступно по лицензии Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0) learning and collaborative learning; teachers should use different opportunities to train students on the principles of collaborative learning, how to implement it, what roles to play, what types collaborative learning and classroom activities to employ by relating to the instructional objectives designed.As a result, they can implement it effectively and appropriately.Second, teachers and other concerned bodies ought to deliver sorts of orientations to the students about the importance of collaborative learning to maximize their views before implementing it.Third, course designers should aim to build students' interest.This can be done by providing interesting and motivating classroom activities, which necessarily appeal to students' age, interest and level of understanding.