Applying Spencer Kagan’s Teambuilding Structure in Teaching Specialized Subjects to English-Majored Students

Abstract

    Cooperative learning (CL) has been widely applied in the world and has been considered as a new trend of education in the 21^st century (Trinh Van Bieu, 2011). Notably, Spencer Kagan’s cooperative learning structures are believed to have the potential to encourage more interactions among students and maximize the improvement of each student’s learning process, thus, having positive impact on teaching in classrooms. In Kagan’s cooperative learning structures, the Teambuilding structure is one of seven key concepts which encourages students’ interaction and promotes self-study. Therefore, teachers can use this structure in their classes, especially for English majored subjects. However, in Vietnam, the application of Kagan’s Teambuilding structure is still limited because teachers have lack of knowledge and skills on cooperative teaching. This article shows how to apply Spencer Kagan’s Teambuilding structure in teaching specialized subjects to English majored students with the participation of 176 informant students and eight teachers at Hanoi University of Industry. The findings from the questionnaire and interview’s data depict a significant enhancement in teaching and learning English majored subjects. In addition, the study also gives teachers some useful suggestions on applying Spencer Kagan’s Teambuilding structure to improve their English teaching.

KEYWORDS: cooperative learning; Spencer Kagan’s Teambuilding structure; specialized English; English-majored students