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Using Collaborative Discussions In College Classrooms, Komako Suzuki

Dissertations

The purpose of the current study is to investigate whether an open-format, small group discussion approach, Collaborative Reasoning (CR), positively affects the English language development of college English as Second Language (ESL) students. According to Zhang and Dougherty Stahl (2011), CR is an approach to discussion that makes use of small groups and is designed to encourage students to become more intellectually and personally engaged.

In order to measure the effectiveness of the CR approach in English classes with ESL students, data were collected from the six classrooms at an international English language institute at a university in the southeastern …