The perceptions of Hong Kong secondary teachers and students towards the integration of cooperative learning in ESL learning

Many research studies testify and indicate that Cooperative Learning contributes to learners’ academic achievement, brings in psychological benefits and cultivates the social skills of learners. At the same time, there are also mounting number of research affirming the effectiveness feedback in enhancing learning achievement. This study reports findings on 6 in-service secondary English teachers from the same school and 19 Secondary 1 students’ perceptions towards the integration of Cooperative Learning in ESL learning of Hong Kong, including the benefits of cooperative, challenges of integration, feedback practises in CL, and perceptions towards the use of feedback in Cooperative Learning. The result showed that both teachers’ and students’ perceptions are generally positive despite of some challenges that they had countered during teaching and learning. The findings are reported and further discussed based on the three search questions to highlight the strengths of the integration and examine the problems of the integration in a bid to offer suggestions to cater teaching and learning needs more effectively to lead the successful implementation of Cooperative Learning in secondary English classrooms of Hong Kong.