Learning English through Collaboration: A Case Study at Mahachulalongornrajavidyalaya University, Loei Buddhist College

The purposes of this research were to compare the understanding of English reading, to compare the learning ability of English vocabularies, to compare an ability of writing English content summary of the monk students before and after learning through collaborative learning, and to study the satisfactory attitudes of the monk students towards the English language and the collaborative learning. The target group of this research was 28 second-year-monk students, from the Faculty of Humanities, Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University, Loei Buddhist College, Thailand, who registered to study the course of Advanced English in the second semester of the academic year 2011. The experimental instruments are the lesson plan of Advanced English, 7 plans, 3 periods/50 minutes/plan, and they were constructed upon the collaborative reading strategies. The researcher surveyed the content which matched the objectives of the course of Advanced English, and which was proper for the students’ ability by using books and printed documents: Buddhist social work, What the Buddha taught, An approach to Buddhism and Toward Sustainable Science, and then bring them to construct the lessons. The data were analyzed by using mean, standard deviation (S.D.) and a paired sample t-test.The findings were as follows:1.The result shows that the understanding of English reading comprehension of the Buddhist monk students after the experiment is higher than before the experiment.2.The result shows that the English vocabulary learning of the Buddhist monk students after the experiment is higher than before the experiment.3.The result shows that the improvement of the ability to write summaries in English of the Buddhist monk students after4.the experiment is higher than before the experiment.5.From the notes of students’ behaviours and attitudes in the collaborative learning, it was very surprising to see the students improve and give the attention to the satisfactory and positive way on collaborative learning. According to the criteria, the Mean score and the Standard deviation of the attitude towards cooperative learning activity were at the highest level. The total Mean score is 4.72 and the standard deviation is .19. That means the monk students were satisfactory with the cooperative learning activity.