Abstract:

The majority of Arab EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners struggle with speaking English fluency. Iraqi students struggle to speak English confidently due to mispronunciation, grammatical errors, short and long pauses while speaking or feeling confused in normal conversations. Collaborative learning is crucial to enhance student’s speaking skills in the long run. This study aims to state the importance of collaborative learning as a teaching method to EFL learners in the meantime. In this quantitative and qualitative study, specific focus is taken on some of Barros’s views of collaborative learning as a teamwork and some of Pattanpichet’s speaking achievements under four categories: academic benefits, social benefits, generic skills, and negative aspects. 100 undergraduate students, whose level at the first academic year in College of Veterinary Medicine, the University of Baghdad-Iraq, have participated in this experimental study. The results of independent and dependent variables estimated Cronbach’s Alpha high internal consistency. The study data chooses the alternative hypothesis maintaining that the treatment effect was statistically significant. Collaborative learning correlates positively with development of Iraqi EFL learners of speaking skills on academic benefits, social benefits, and generic skills at the level of significance, unlike passive correspondence. It was risen with negative aspects. The main limitations of the current study were that of small sample size of Iraqi EFL learners among medical colleges. The results revealed merely one medical college among other colleges in medicine, science, social and human studies at the University of Baghdad. It has not covered other levels of undergraduate study. The study recommends additional investigations to explore the value of collaborative learning to achieve student’s speaking skills in human and social fields of the Arab and foreign learning communities.

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