The Effects of Cooperative Learning on Improving English Pronunciation and Comprehension of Medical Students

Introduction: Acquisition of intelligible English pronunciation and comprehension of medical texts has been considered as an important need for medical students.  This can be improved by employing different methods and taking into consideration various learning styles of students. This study is an attempt to reveal the effect of cooperative learning on enhancing pronunciation and reading comprehension in students of medicine in Yasuj University of Medical Sciences.

Methods: All 60 students of medicine in Yasuj University of Medical Sciences who enrolled in English for specific purposes 1st Feb 2013 took part in this quasi experimental study and were divided into two groups of thirties, according to the enrollment list. Cooperative learning was implemented with the experimental group dividing them into groups of five randomly, while the control group was taught with traditional method. Phonetic transcriptions were used along with passages taken from their book for the two groups. The data collected from three reading aloud tasks, scores of pretest, and midterm and final written examinations were analyzed using SPSS software, version19.

Results: The results of the study showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group significantly (P<0.05) in all areas of reading aloud tests, pronunciation, and comprehension.

Conclusion: It is concluded that cooperative learning significantly improves medical students’ pronunciation and comprehension. Teaching pronunciation and comprehension through cooperative learning yields better learning results for university students.