Meta-Cognitive Skills Development Through Collaborative Learning

This paper focuses on the development of meta-cognitive skills as an important tool to facilitate the learning process. Meta-cognitive skills have a significant impact on students’ academic success as they provide deep insight into human nature, help students better understand their learning strengths and weaknesses, to learn more effectively, and achieve better results. The study shows that collaborative learning activities involving imagination introduced into ESP classes bring students’ meta-cognitive skills such as critical thinking, public speaking skills, interpersonal skills, team work skills, etc., on a new level, which eventually improves students’ learning outcomes and develops their mental capacity. In collaborative learning, presented as a joint mental activity involving imagination, it becomes possible to actualize the imagined possibilities of students’ future professional activities. The study was conducted within the course of English for Specific Purposes at a polytechnic university. The study participants were master students majoring in Digital Linguistics. As shown by the results of the study, collaborative learning techniques such as Socratic seminars, peer instruction, solving problems across teams, jigsaw activities can be an effective tool in the development of meta-cognitive skills in the process of teaching, since they provide the learning environment which makes it possible for students to organize their learning process and improve their learning outcomes.