Cooperative learning in explicit vocabulary instruction of Spanish as a foreign language: a quasi-experimental study with German speaking students.

This article shows the findings of our quasi-experimental research on the use of the methodology known as cooperative learning as a means for explicit teaching of Spanish vocabulary. Our main objective is to measure the effectiveness of our methodological proposal on two experimental groups with the same study load, but with a different time distribution of their lessons, and to contrast their results on a post-test with those of the control group. Our research counts with a pretest-posttest design, which allows us to secure some quantitative data. The preliminary data analysis shows that both experimental groups obtained better results than the control group in the posttest. Moreover, the significant differences among one of the experimental groups and the control group lead us to conclude that a different time distribution of the lessons also plays a decisive role in lexicon acquisition.