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learning as a valuable process through which students learn academic as well as social skills. After a brief introduction on the objectives and vision of the model, the book moves on to a brief explanation of five important principles of successful cooperative learning experiences: the Principle of Distributed Leadership, the Principle of Heterogeneous Grouping, the Principle of Positive Interdependence and Individual Accountability, the Principle of Social Skill Acquisition, and the Principle of Group Autonomy. The detailed illustration based on an actual class will convince teachers that cooperative learning involves much more than the typical group work that students are familiar with. Teachers will have to take time to explain procedures, at least in the first few attempts in class, and incorporate principles such as that of distributed leadership, where every group member takes on leadership roles. Teachers are then encouraged to reflect on their beliefs about cooperative group work, changing their thinking where necessary. The second section of the book explores those important principles in detail, including advice on how to observe group work without intervening unnecessarily. The third section delves deeper into the teaching of social skills, exploring the importance of skills such as checking for understanding; the steps involved in teaching these skills, and finally the processing of the skills. Advise is provided for trouble-shooting, for instance, teachers who notice "many unfriendly behaviors during group work" (p. 103) need not be disheartened. When they consistently allocate time for conducting processing with students, teachers may well discover significant improvements in student behaviors. A separate chapter is devoted to the implementation of cooperative learning in classes that adopt block scheduling. The appendices offer a refreshing supply of lesson plans, worksheets and observation forms which are self-contained guides on the steps involved in cooperative learning. The systematic guidelines and procedures throughout the book are reassuring and practical. Most valuable are the guidelines on the processing of cooperative group work, because the skills that are developed in the process may help in resolving many of the difficulties that teachers notice in class. For example, some teachers in my school notice that when they approach some groups for the purpose of monitoring, the group members tend to stop their discussions, making it impossible for the teacher to monitor. Teachers would have welcomed specific advice on how to resolve more of such problems, but the writers deserve kudos for their emphasis on raising students' awareness of successes and difficulties in their cooperative endeavors, and encouraging students themselves to think of ways to resolve the difficulties, as a group, in the spirit of cooperative learning. Cooperative Learning. David Kluge, Steve McGuire,
David W. Johnson, & Roger T. Johnson (Eds.),1999. Tokyo: Japan Association
for Language Teaching (JALT). 198 pages. ISBN:4-9900370-5-7.Price: ¥2500. Here in Asia, CL is sometimes viewed warily as another Western fad, but the current volume is another example that CL is growing Asian roots. The focus of the book's 14 chapters is the use of CL in Japan with special emphasis on the teaching of English. With the exception of two chapters by well-known CL scholars Roger and David Johnson, all the chapters are based on the CL experience in this nation of 120 million. The book also includes a useful annotated bibliography of general works on CL prepared by Steve McGuire. Another feature that makes it easier for the book's readers to learn more about CL is that all the authors' email and snailmail addresses are provided in an opening section entitled "Instant Index".
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