An Investigation Into Application Situation Of Cooperation Learning In Senior English Classroom Teaching

Since Cooperative Learning emerged in America in the 1970 s, as a creative and effective teaching philosophy and teaching method, it has drawn considerable attention of the people in the world and has been extensively applied to English teaching. Cooperative Learning refers to the method that a teacher divides students into several groups in which students are assigned various roles. They make best use of their own advantages and bypass the disadvantages. They cooperate with each other so as to effectively fulfill learning tasks and aims prescribed. This method focuses on interaction to promote students' cognitive development, which to a certain extent overcomes disadvantages of the present teaching model-a teacher talking and students listening. Furthermore, the present teaching model makes teachers ignore students' autonomy in the process of teaching. After introduced into our country, Cooperative Learning accelerates the pace of domestic educational reform. Meanwhile, New Curriculum Reform advocates the application of Cooperative Learning in English teaching to transform traditional teaching methods in order to develop learners' cooperative consciousness and competence and gradually improve learners' integrated skills.Cooperative Learning has been appplied in English teaching for many years in Yan'an senior high school. From the theoretical aspect, the method has many advantages. For example, it is conducive to arousing study interest, improving student grades and relationships between teachers and students and activating classroom atmosphere and so on. But from the practical perspective, the following aspects are worth exploring: what is the specific teaching situation for the application of Cooperative Learning in senior English classroom? What are the problems existing in the process of the application? By using the methods of questionnaire, observation and interview, the present researcher intends to have a survey of current teaching situation and problems in the application of Cooperative Learning from five aspects, that is, interest and attitude towards English learning, grouping, the activity results, the activity process and evaluation.The research results show that the situation in the application of Cooperative Learning can be summarized as follows: Firstly, although teachers and students are familiar with Cooperative Learning and consider it as a good teaching or learning method, some teachers misunderstand the nature of cooperative learning. Secondly, many teachers' teaching content is rich and varied and teaching purposes are clear. They can also direct students to participate in cooperative learning activities. But few teachers can seize optimal opportunities of cooperation to teach and the tasks they assigned are too easy or substantially complex. Thirdly, although in each class students are divided into groups, the way of grouping is simple and students' grades is the only one criterion to consult. Fourthly, students' learning results show that cooperative learning is beneficial for students to master elementary knowledge and develop basic skills. Finally, teachers' comments are positive, encouraging, which enhance learners' confidence and motivate students to study hard. However, teachers' evaluation focuses on individual student performance rather than that of the whole group.The result of the survey illustrates the following problems: improper method of grouping, simple way of evaluation, inappropriate orientation of teachers' roles, unequal participation opportunities and so on. In light of these problems, the researcher puts forward tentative suggestions to perfect and optimize Cooperative Learning so as to improve current English teaching situation, which in turn is beneficial for developing students' independent learning abilities and enhance English teaching quality.