‘We Divided the Questions Evenly among Ourselves to Answer them Properly’: Collaborative Learning in EFL Classroom Status Quo

Collaborative learning is a pedagogical approach employed by language teachers to enhance language proficiency and improve the learning process. Students may be asked to work collaboratively inside and outside the classroom. However, studies examining the experiences of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners working collaboratively to complete tasks in Saudi Arabia are scarce. Thus, this study aims to answer these research questions: How do students engage in collaborative learning in a vocabulary course? How do students perceive the effects of collaborative learning in a vocabulary course? Data collection involved focus groups and retrospective interviews with fifty-two students majoring in human resource management at a Saudi university. The findings revealed that students performed five primary roles: translating English to Arabic, assisting their peers, searching for information, supervising group performance, sharing ideas and knowledge, and adopting different strategies to answer assigned tasks. It also identified the resources they drew on, the distribution of tasks, how they formed groups and engaged via WhatsApp. Positive views about collaborative learning included that it provided opportunities to practice the English language, facilitated understanding of information, made studying easier, and promoted social skills. The negatives mentioned were an unwillingness to work in a group and overreliance on others. This paper recommends that teachers supervise students’ interactions to ensure each member achieves their maximum potential, while advising policymakers to encourage the implementation of collaborative learning in the language classroom.