Cooperative Learning and World-Readiness Standards for Learning Languages: A Guide for Effective Practice

This book provides curriculum planners, materials developers, and language educators with curricular perspectives and classroom activities in order to address the needs of learners of English as a global lingua franca in an increasingly globalized and interdependent world. The authors argue that language educators would benefit from synthesizing and using research and evidence-based cooperative learning methods and structures to address the current world-readiness standards for learning languages in the five domains of Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities. The book outlines the main cooperative learning principles of heterogenous grouping, positive interdependence, individual accountability, social/collaborative skills, and group processing, then demonstrates their relevance to language teaching and learning. This book will be of interest to students in pre-service teacher education programmes as well as in-service practitioners, teacher trainers and educational administrators.

Ghazi M. Ghaith is Professor at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses and conducts regular in-service training in Lebanon and the Middle East. His professional interests include curriculum development and material writing. His research focuses on the determinants of reading comprehension and the applications of cooperative learning in language teaching and teacher education.
Ghada M. Awada is a faculty member and researcher at the Lebanese American University-Graduate Research Studies, Lebanon. Her research interests span reading and writing strategies, human rights education (HRE), global citizenship education (GCED), cooperative learning, and ICT integration in teaching and learning.