EFFECTS OF COOPERATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY ON SENIOR SECONDARY STUDENTS’ ACHIEVEMENT IN COMPOSITION WRITING IN QUA’AN PAN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF PLATEAU STATE

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of cooperative learning strategy on senior secondary two students’ achievement in composition writing. Four research questions guided the study and four hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level significance. The study adopted pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design. All the SS2 students in the study area in the 2021/2022 academic session constituted the population for the study. Using purposive sampling technique, a total of 80 SS2 students were sampled from two intact classes in the two out of the twenty-one government secondary schools. One school was assigned to the experimental group and was taught using cooperative learning strategy, while the other was assigned to the control group and was taught using discussion method. Composition Writing Achievement Test (CWAT) constructed by the researchers was used to collect data. The data were analyzed using mean and standard deviation to answer the research questions and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Findings showed significant difference in the mean achievement in composition writing of students who were exposed to cooperative learning method over and above their counterparts in the control group. This implies that cooperative learning strategy facilitates students’ abilities to generate and logically organize ideas resulting in coherent composition writing by the students. It was thus, recommended among others that English language teachers should adopt cooperative learning strategy in teaching essay writing while curriculum planners and textbook writers should incorporate the strategy into the curriculum and the course books.