Cooperative Learning-the Key To Improving The Learning Strategies Of Rural Middle School Students

The study of the learning strategies of the second language dated back to the 1970s. From the 1980s, linguists in China began to devote themselves to it, but few people have ever paid close attention to that of the rural middle school students. The subjects of the present study are 111 7^th graders from Class 5 and 6, Guli Middle School, Jiangning District, Nanjing. It aims to study and discuss how to train the students' English learning strategies through questionnaires and talking with them and to help them use learning strategies consciously and learn independently.The study here is based on the Attribution Theory of Bernard Weiner and the definition of Language Learning Strategies by Rebecca Oxford. The questionnaire is based on the instructions from English Curriculum Standard (2001) for Junior 3 students. It lists four strategies — Cognitive Strategy, Monitoring Strategy, Communicative Strategy and Resource Strategy. It has 29 questions. The result shows it is necessary for the students to improve their learning strategies.The cooperative learning emphasized by English Curriculum Standard (2001) can help improve their learning strategies. Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a given subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement and sense of achievement. From 6 perspectives of the cooperative learning—interaction, target, teachers and students, form, scene and evaluation, it is feasible to improve the learning strategies of rural school students.