2.1. Teachers' Profile
The results indicate that the difference in teachers'
experiences with teaching English did not affect their attitudes toward
adopting collaborative visualisation to develop students' communication skills.
The majority of respondents have taught English for more than 10 years and they
all have faced difficulties with their students because they still have
problems of communication and this is due to the lack of new strategies and
techniques that cannot be implemented because of the lack of materials. Most of
them have been for a training period abroad and during their experiences; they
have always encouraged new techniques to develop communication. So, their
experiences affected positively their attitudes, and this is an example of what
is said in the definition of attitudes provided by Allport (1935: 810), an
attitude is «A mental or neural state of readiness, organized through
experience.» They all encouraged the implementation of collaborative
visualisation as a support to the traditional ways to develop students'
communication skills in English which goes with two of our hypotheses where we
highlighted that teachers have positive attitudes toward the use of
collaborative visualisation to develop students' communication skills and that
Collaborative visualisation promotes the exchange of information, encourages
students to participate and lead them to discussions and debates which help
them to develop their communication skills. 2.2. Teachers' Attitudes
towards Collaborative Learning
Collaborative learning refers to learning in groups which
means students share learning activities and get knowledge together. According
to Erkens et al., (2005: 466), collaborative learning encourages three main
processes: mutual activation, grounding and negotiation. Question 3 of the
interview, deals with the importance of mutual activation and share of
knowledge among students. All the six teachers agree with the fact that mutual
activation is very essential in collaborative learning for developing students'
communication
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
skills since students learn better because they have the
opportunity to discuss their information and knowledge among them. As mentioned
in the explanation provided to the definition of Dillenbourg (1999) to
collaborative learning, during collaborative activities, students are expected
to interact with one another, to be mutually engaged in conversations, to
coordinate their efforts to solve problems. It is noticed that some students
learn easily and better from their mates rather than their teachers because the
way their mates give them the information fulfils their minds more and they
feel at ease while working together.
Mutual activation should be in all classes, according to one
teacher, through it; students who know more help students who know less and
this facilitates the learning and make the understanding better. Therefore,
such a process is essential and considered as a basic element of communication.
Students, when sharing the knowledge, foster dialogues and may find themselves
in situations where they show agreement and disagreement, interact and discuss
and this helps in developing their communication skills, as one teacher has
said, «Learners should share information, and this can foster
dialogue, leading to consensus and /or disagreement. The student interacts with
other students in group discussions and other team activities in the learning
process, and this fosters more interaction and collaboration among
students». This goes with the second condition of successful
collaborative learning that Johnson and Johnson (1999) have mentioned, as
explained in the literature review, namely; students must participate in
important face to face interactions, in which they share knowledge, give
constructive feedback, encourage each other to achieve cognitive activities.
Students' participation attracts the other members' attention to listen and to
reflect.
The second process that Erkens has mentioned is grounding that
refers to creating a common frame of reference on which students can rely.
«Grounding is the name given to the interactive processes by which
common ground (or mutual understanding) between individuals is constructed and
maintained» (Baker et al., 1999: 33). Question 4 focused on
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
the importance of this process in collaborative learning as
well as in the way in which it contributes to promoting students' communication
skills. The findings of the question indicate that all the teachers we have
asked, share the idea that this process is essential to communication since it
makes it better. As one of the teachers has argued, «a common frame of
reference helps students to answer questions, solve problems, learn new things
and understand better», if two or more students are supposed to make
a conversation in an oral expression exam about a given topic, how can they
succeed it if they do not share a common ground, how can they coordinate to
communicate on the topic if they do not rely on the same frame of reference?
« Grounding is a common ground of mutual understanding, knowledge,
beliefs, assumptions, presuppositions, and so on, has been claimed to be
necessary for many aspects of communication and
collaboration»(ibid).
The results of question 7 dealing with the importance of
negotiation during collaborative activities in developing students'
communication skills indicate that all of the teachers agree that it is
important. This is because, as the teachers explained, negotiation permits
students to express themselves and to put their knowledge into practice and
that it is a basic element in collaborative learning and communication as well.
Negotiation in collaborative learning can be seen as a process where two or
more students with different needs and goals discuss an issue to find a
mutually acceptable solution or as it was mentioned in Erkens theory. In the
same context, Morais et al, (2019: 216) say that, «The goal of
students when participating in negotiation training should be [...] becoming
good negotiators and finding good agreements». Negotiating requires
«give and take»; this means, interaction between students which is
quiet essential in communication, and this proves the importance of this
process in enhancing their communication skills.
Within these processes, we can distinguish three major
activities and we have emphasised on two of them. The first is: Focusing by
maintaining discussion in class, and
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Chapter IV Discussion of the Findings
concerning this, the findings of question 5 dealing with the
strategies students use t maintain discussion in class reveal that all the
interviewed teachers noticed that their students do try to maintain the
discussion during a collaborative activity and the majority through asking
questions and sometimes through other strategies like suggesting ideas, giving
one's opinion, clarifying and summarising what has been said and through
providing feedback. In this respect, Erkens et al., (2005:466) say:
«By focusing, students try to maintain a shared topic of discourse and
to repair a common focus if they notice a focus divergence; students coordinate
their topic of discourse by focusing».
In addition to this, there is the second activity which
consists of checking. The results of question 6 that deals with the ways
teachers take to check their students' understanding indicate that all of them
do it by making use of the technique of asking verification questions to their
students. Concerning this, teachers have said that they ask their students
questions such as: «Have you understood?» But generally,
students do not say the truth. That is why teachers choose questions in direct
relation to the topic being discussed. About this activity, it is mentioned in
the theory of coordination process that «(...) checking was found to
be one of the major coordinating activities dialogues of collaborative problem
solving (...)» (Erkens, Schmidt, Renshaw 2000, cited in Erkens et
al., 2005: 466) this to emphasise on the importance of checking in
collaborative learning.
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