Improvement of a didactic unit and creation of a project through cooperative learning

Abstract

Times are changing and, along with them, so are the ways of creating and transferring knowledge: the teaching-learning processes and with them, the ways in which teachers motivate pupils. This paper develops a didactic unit designed exclusively for the subject of English as a foreign language (EFL) for students attending the first course of secondary at Ximen D´Urrea High School located in the village of L´Alcora. The main objective is to develop a didactic unit focusing on cultural aspects of the Anglo-Saxon and American cultures with the aim of creating a final project using cooperative methodology and motivating EFL students. The reason why the lessons have been designed following this methodology is to increase learners’ interest in the learning of language, particularly the English one. Therefore, students should develop fellowship and teamwork among themselves to achieve a common goal through the Jigsaw Puzzle Technique. Students will work with a project and the creation of a poster at the end of the unit. The didactic unit will take place in four sessions of 50 minutes each. At the end of these four sessions, the students will take part in a survey to evaluate their degree of satisfaction with the methodology. The results obtained will reflect how motivating the students have found the technique as well as how much it has benefited their learning.