Students’ perception towards using collaborative learning techniques for teaching reading comprehension: a case of thai–nichi institute of technology

Abstract

People, who work in the education industry, are nowadays responsible for the development of methodologies which are both challenging and effective in matching students' learning achievements and to keep pace with ever-changing demands of teaching and education.By these means, student success in the academic field is strengthened when collaborative learning techniques are used. The purposes of the study were 1) to investigate the students’ attitude towards using collaborative language learning techniques for reading instruction at Thai – Nichi Institute of Technology and 2) to identify the students’ perception towards the impacts of using collaborative learning techniques inthe EFL reading classroom at Thai – Nichi Institute of Technology. The samples were 30 first year students who studied an English Foundation Course and came from different faculties at TNI in the first semester of 2019 academic year. All of students selected for the study were non-English major students. They were selected by purposive sampling based on the class assigned for the researcher by the university registrar’s office. The data was collected through a survey questionnaire.

The results of the research indicated that the students genenally tend towards supporting the implementation of collaborative learning strategies in teaching and learning reading comprehenshion. In addition, it was found that their learning motivation increased after engaging in this approach. Last but not least, they also felt more relaxed when they got involved in group activities for EFL reading classroom. Consequently,they did not feel any anxiety during the group activities and most of them claimed that they gained more confidence when they had to read English passages alone.