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Education should be ever-evolving. No one school of thought can always be “one size fits all”. Whether it is the different approaches like Waldorf, Montessori or Reggio Emilia or the various strategies of learning like a Socratic seminar or think, pair, share, the classrooms should always keep evolving with the needs of the changing times, including geographical and cultural demands.

With technology and gamified approaches making language learning easily accessible, it is also a much-in-demand sector of the education industry. That brings us to the part where not only ESL students are increasing, but also the TEFL certification awarding bodies and overseas ESL jobs across the globe are enjoying constant popularity.

Once a teacher goes through the ESL teacher training, he or she is ready to dive into the job market to find a suitable position with a good salary package. Professionally speaking, however, that is not enough. With a TEFL certification, you are definitely equipped with your bank of strategies and activities to teach English as a second or a foreign language. But remember, the practical classroom is a different reality.

With different types of classroom juggling your way, to teach ESL or EFL needs proper information and identifying the ways certain types of classrooms operate. Let us look at how EFL/ESL can be taught in a cooperative classroom setting.

From the word cooperative, you might gather the meaning that it is a classroom where students learn and work in groups. Coined by educator, John Dewey, such classrooms have been doing rounds in American schools and now gradually the entire world is also adopting the same. However, it is not quite on the similar lines of collaborative learning. Let us take you through the uniqueness of “cooperative learning” by familiarising you with the elements of this learning atmosphere.

1. Interaction- The assignments and the activities are more task based where they conclude meaningful insights from various topics by face to face discussions and helping one another to think critically.
2. Interdependence – This might give an idea of collaboration, but that is only possible when the individual jobs are successfully done and synched with the tasks completed by the other members of the group.
3. Accountability- This allows students to take ownership or responsibility of the part of the activities allotted to them. They discuss and set their own ground rules as individuals and also keeping in mind the convenience of the group.
4. Learning design processing- All these when put together, cooperative learning helps in inducing an atmosphere of communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity without much involvement of the facilitator.

Therefore, cooperative learning keeps the comfort of the learners into consideration. Since a majority of the work is done in learning groups, they come up with their best possible practice to process information. The facilitator acts as a monitor and tracks the progress of the groups in a neutral manner. This has also helped the ESL/EFL teachers to a greater extent. Especially when an ESL/EFL teacher seeks an overseas teaching job, they are thrown into a different culture. That brings a communication gap and a major bar towards easy identification of the learning styles.

When ESL classrooms are converted into cooperative classrooms, the equation between the facilitator and the learners are also improved. The relationship is easily established. The teacher establishes the topic and assigns the activities and the learners are put into groups. They are given a limited time that also creates a sense of competition and allows the learners to set a discipline within the groups.

This can be applied to any activity that is carried out in the ESL class. For example, familiarising with “WH” words. Teachers can prepare a bingo sheet where questions would be written and the students have to finish the maze by asking the questions as the answers are noted by the team members.

Then, further practice can be done with the help of pictures where they have to carefully use a “WH” word to ask a question regarding the pictures in the bingo chart. In the meantime, while the learners are participating in groups to finish the task, the facilitator can monitor and observe their performance based on the individual participation and collaborative results in the end. The result is more effective use of the target language and thinking in English!