Jia Jiannan, Mahani Binti Stapa, Guo Xiaoxi
Cooperative Learning (CL) is a learner-centered instructional approach which is believed to stimulate students’ oral production and interaction, and contribute to the development of speaking skills. Though there were many systematic literature review articles on CL, but the review with a focus on CL and ESL/EFL oral proficiency is very scant. This study seeks to identify, synthesize, and evaluate the extant scholarship on the application of CL to enhance oral English proficiency. The authors retrieved on the major databases and engines including Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC and Google Scholar by the key words such as cooperative learning, collaborative learning, student teams achievement division, jigsaw, group investigation, speaking and oral proficiency. 42 relevant empirical studies (including peer-reviewed journal articles and doctoral dissertations) from 2000 onwards were finally included through setting inclusion/exclusion criteria, identifying relevant literature, and thorough screening for final selection. The authors then systematically analyzed the studies in terms of the effectiveness, research design and instruments, adopted CL methods, and ways of grouping. This study also provided some implications for future research and practice in this area.