Interpreting jigsaw technique at classroom

As “each member of a group has a piece of information needed to complete a group task” ( Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistics, 1998) in the EFL classroom, jigsaw is a cooperative learning technique that requires everyone’s cooperative effort to produce the final product. Just as in a jigsaw puzzle, each piece—each student’s part—is essential for the production and full understanding of the final product. If each student’s part is essential, then each student is essential. That is precisely what makes this strategy so effective.

Jigsaw is said to be able to increase students’ learning since “a) it is less threatening for many students, b) it increases the amount of student participation in the classroom, c) it reduces the need for competitiveness and d) it reduces the teacher’s dominance in the classroom” ( Longman Dictionary ,  1998).

Consequently, jigsaw strategy can successfully reduce students’ reluctance to participate in the classroom activities and help create an active learner-centered atmosphere. Studies showed that it was only under certain conditions that cooperative efforts may be expected to be more productive than competitive and individualistic efforts. Johnson, Johnson and Holubec (1993) put forward five principles for jigsaw strategy:

• a.    Positive interdependence

Each group member’s efforts are required and indispensable for the group success. Each group member has to make unique contributions to the joint effort.

• b.    Face-to-face promotive interaction

Group members have to orally explain how to solve problems, teach one’s knowledge to others, check for understanding, discuss concepts being learned and associate the present learning with the past one.

• c.    Individual and group accountability

The size of the group should be kept small, for the smaller the size of the group is, the greater the individual accountability may be.

The teacher is expected to give an individual test to each student, randomly examine students by asking one student to present his or her group’s work orally to the teacher (in the presence of the group) or to the entire class, observe each group and record the frequency with which each member contributes to the group’s work, appoint one student in each group as the leader, who is responsible for asking other group members to explain the rationale underlying the group answers, and monitor students to teach what they’ve learned to the others.[2]

• d.    Interpersonal skills

Social skills are a necessity for the success of jigsaw learning in class. Social skills include leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, conflictmanagement skills and so on.

• e.    Group processing

Group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships, describe what member actions are helpful and what are not, and make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change. Jigsaw learning makes it possible for students to be introduced to material and yet bear a high level of personal responsibility. It helps develop teamwork and cooperative learning skills within all students and a depth of knowledge not possible if the students learn all of the material on them own.

Finally, since students are supposed to report their own findings to the home group in jigsaw learning, it quite often discloses a student’s own understanding of a concept as well as reveal any misunderstandings.

A Study into Jigsaw in the College English Class

• i.    Purpose and Questions of the Study

Jigsaw has been practiced in many ways in the present researchers’ College English tutorials. The present jigsaw, somewhat different from the one implemented by Elliot Aronson, was adopted so as to carry out a variety of classroom activities for different Jigsaw Strategy as a Cooperative Learning Technique: Focusing on the Language Learners language learning tasks. It combined several important aspects of collaborative learning, including listening, oral reading, reading comprehension, writing and oral presentation. Its purpose was to find an effective way to promote student participation as well as a useful technique to focus on language learners in the EFL classroom where students can experience success, which in turn can contribute to positive motivation and lead to still greater success. The present jigsaw research was intended to explore the following questions: First, is the jigsaw technique suitable for college students in English classes? Second, is the jigsaw technique an effective means to integrate listening, reading, repeating, reciting, retelling, and writing into one English class?

Third, can the jigsaw reading serve the purpose of cooperative learning and produce positive reactions from the students?[1]

Teacher’s Role in the Jigsaw

In a jigsaw classroom, the teacher organizes practice and communicative activities, but this does not mean leaving the students to learn all by themselves. Instead the teacher should try to help the students take greater control over their learning by becoming actively involved. The primary role of the teacher is to choose learning material, structure the groups, explain the cooperative nature of group work, provide an environment conducive for this type of work, monitor group work and assist students in working with the material. “The teacher needs to float from group to group in order to observe the process. Intervene if any group is having trouble such as a member being dominating or disruptive.

There will come a point that the group leader should handle this task. Teachers can whisper to the group leader as to how to intervene until the group leader can effectively do it themselves” .[2]

• ii.    Motivating Students into the Jigsaw

As the questionnaire survey shows, 71% of the students confirmed the importance of motivating students to communicate and accomplish the task together in jigsaw. Some students who have never experienced jigsaw and who have been accustomed to the competitive model of traditional classroom might be skeptical of this model, so it is necessary to motivate the students at the opening stages of jigsaw activities. It has been observed that the researchers’ remarks about the forthcoming activities could arouse high levels of interest and attention on the part of the students. Therefore the teacher should explain the method in detail, tell students that jigsaw is a cooperative learning technique which is characterized by interdependent learning rather than independent or dependent learning, and familiarize them with the benefits of jigsaw learning. In this way, students may become active, and thereby learning itself in jigsaw will be better on the way.5

Many benefits were gained when jigsaw strategy was used in the researchers’ tutorials. However, this does not imply that all classroom activities should be carried out in groups. Rather what is stressed here is that group activities should be a regular and significant part of EFL classroom.

In conclusion, as far as language learners are concerned, jigsaw strategy is, by trial and error, a proper way to promote learners’ participation .