Cooperative learning and the writing production

Abstract

Acquiring the writing skill is highly complex for students due to the use of grammatical rules, vocabulary, syntax, and communicative sense, therefore it is imperative to apply active methodologies such as cooperative learning. According to this argument, the present investigation was developed with the objective to analyze the Cooperative Learning and the writing production in the students from second semester of Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. The research used a qualitative-quantitative, descriptive, quasi-experimental methodology, working with 25 students from second semester of Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros at Universidad Técnica. The participants took a pretest (PET de Cambridge) to determine their level of mastery in written production. Later, 6 cooperative learning activities were applied to them and at the end of the investigation a posttest was applied to determine the impact of the strategy. The development of the current research concluded that Cooperative Learning improves written production because the students went from an insufficient level to an acceptable one after its application. The fact was that the typical interaction between the students while working in pairs, group, and collective activates mental processes such as attention, active listening, facilitates comprehension, critical thinking and reasoning due to mutual support to improve progressively.