The Effectiveness of Using the Cooperative Language Learning Approach to Enhance EFL Writing Skills among Saudi University Students

The cooperative language learning (CLL) approach was used to encourage second-year university <br>students at the College of Languages and Translation, at Al-Imam University to learn from their peers so that <br>they could develop their writing skills. Students in CLL-based groups were trained to be more responsible for <br>their learning through developing their interaction as well as their linguistic competence in a more <br>relaxed social context. This treatment included sophomore students enrolled in the EN 211 course in the second <br>semester of the 2013 academic year. Two instruments were used in this study: a pre-post writing test and an <br>attitude questionnaire. The pre- and post-scores from the test were calculated for descriptive statistics and <br>compared using a Wilcoxon Test. The process of evaluating students’ writings focused mainly on analyzing <br>their mistakes about spelling, use of vocabulary, grammar, punctuation as well as coherence. The <br>findings revealed that the students’ scores in writing were higher for the post-test than the pre-test at the <br>significance level of .001 after being subject to this kind of treatment. However, it must be stated that the <br>degree of improvement was not extremely high, as students still made some mistakes about the <br>previously mentioned points. As for the attitude scale, the results obtained proved that the students developed <br>positive attitudes towards using the cooperative learning approach to develop language skills in general and to <br>develop their writing skills in particular