A Study Of Cooperative Learning In Developing Senior High School Students' Oral English Communicative Competence

Teachers usually neglect the training of senior high school students'listening and speaking abilities in English teaching. The teaching method is easily limited to the traditional Grammar Translation. So the students can't speak English well. It is becoming more and more serious because they are afraid of making mistakes. Even the students who are good at English dare not communicate with others in English. Therefore they can't improve their ability of using English. So it's urgent and important to improve the students'oral abilities through a good and practical way. Cooperative Learning (CL) offers us an unlimited space of choices and ideas for encouraging students to speak English. It can encourage students to involve in kinds of oral interactive activities.The researches and instructions on oral English teaching which should be conducted have practical significance: CL of oral English is applicable to the new English curriculum reform and provides with the new teaching principle; CL of oral English is a new try in the research field of pragmatics; In CL the students learn together to maximize their own and each other's learning.In this thesis, a brief review of the theory of CL is given, which shows cooperation is the key to teaching spoken English. The importance of teaching spoken English is illustrated. The author also investigates the current situation of the spoken English teaching and learning in high schools. She tries to work out some suitable solutions to help the senior students acquire high oral proficiency through experiments on activities based on the principles of CL.The experiment starts in February, 2006. The participants in this research are the senior students in Grade Two,Xing Ye Senior High School. There are thirty-six participants in each class: the experimental group and the control group. We carry out CL to develop oral English communicative competence in the experimental group while the control group uses the traditional method in their study. Before the experiment, we have a questionnaire and an oral test to learn the situation of their learning English and oral English level. During the experiment, according to the CL strategies, we carry out varieties of oral CL activities. The experiment lasts two semesters. At the end of the experiment, another questionnaire is conducted in the experimental group, about learning students'psychological change, attitude and classroom behaviors. Also, a second oral test is given in both groups and the data analysis of the results is compared. The experiment shows that CL can enhance students'interest in learning English; students form more positive, accepting, and supportive relationship with peers; CL is an effective teaching way to improve students'oral English communicative competence and develop their multipe intellegences in senior high schools.This thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter 1 introduces the research background of the thesis, the purpose, significance, methodology and subjects of the research.Chapter 2 gives a brief introduction to the theory on CL and oral English teaching in senior high schools. It can help the teachers understand the theoretical framework and the general description of the study on the teaching of foreign spoken language at home and abroad. It also states the theoretical basis, which is about some theories concerning this research.Chapter 3 is devoted to the research methodology. It describes some details about the design, early preparation and the implementation.Chapter 4 analyzes of the results of the questionnaires and the tests of the experiment in detail. Generally speaking, the experiment is successful. It can obviously improve the senior high school students'oral English competence.Chapter 5 ends with the conclusion of the present research and the existing problems, and some suggestions for further research are proposed.