[ELTWeekly Volume 8, Issue 12 | July 18, 2016 | ISSN 0975-3036]
Marcin Lewandowski says, “Being an autonomous and independent learner is crucial for successful language learning. The ability to manage your own learning without relying on the teacher is a skill that should be in the repertoire of all language (and otherwise) students. To this end, teachers too should encourage and help students develop this skill. One way of doing it is through setting up collaborative activities where learners can draw on each other’s (rather than the teacher’s) knowledge and experience to complete a task.
Collaboration advantage
Learner collaboration has numerous advantages. It develops real life transferable skills like teamwork, allocation of responsibilities, and negotiation. It also promotes learner independence by shifting the focus from the teacher onto other students.
Working with others engages learners in collective knowledge building allowing them to generate ideas together and to expose one another to valuable input in the process. This collective scaffolding allows them to work at a higher level of activity than would be the case if the learners worked on their own (Storch & Wigglesworth 2009)”.