Samenvatting

Since the introduction of the subject of English in the Dutch elementary schools, research has shown that the Dutch elementary schools don’t spend the same amount of time on English education in comparison to other European countries that teach English as a second language. This could negatively influence the position of the Netherlands in Europe and the rest of the world, since English is a lingua franca: a language that forms a mean of communication between people with different languages.
This research focusses on the influence of cooperative learning on “student engagement” and “opportunity to learn” as intermediate variables for improving the academic achievements of Dutch students in elementary schools on the subject of English. The variable “opportunity to learn” was measured by observing the verbal production of English of the participants.
The two variables were observed during two English lessons without cooperative learning and two English lessons with cooperative learning. The results of this research show that both the overall student engagement and opportunities to learn (production of English) improved during lessons with cooperative learning. Even though these results were not significant because of the limited amount of participants (n=3), they should not be discarded.