A Study On Incorporating Cooperative Learning In College English Classrooms

College English teaching is an organic part of high education system, and College English is a required course for college students. According to the newly-revised Requirements for College English Teaching (MOE, 2007), cultivating students' comprehensive competence, especially the ability of listening and speaking should be emphasized in College English teaching. However, through the years, the situation of College English teaching still allows no optimism. One important reason is that the traditional teacher-fronted approach is the dominating teaching model adopted in College English classrooms, in which the knowledge transmission is overemphasized and students are just passive receivers all the time. This thesis tries to explore the feasibilities of Cooperative Learning when it is applied in College English teaching, which may put forward some significant implications for promoting the College English Reformation.Cooperative Learning, which was defined as the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other's learning (Slavin, 1995; Johnson and Johnson, 1999), has been proved to be a theoretic and strategic system applied by many countries in the world during the past three decades. Students in the same group share a common goal and they need to understand that they can only succeed in achieving the goal if and only if other students in the same group reach their goals. They need to be encouraged to seek learning outcomes that are beneficial both to themselves and to all other group mates. Based on the review of literature, Cooperative Learning can have positive and effective influence on students' achievements, self-esteem, and interpersonal relationship.The thesis is mainly concerned with an experimental study examining the effectiveness of cooperative learning in college English teaching, which takes the corresponding psychological and second language acquisition theories as its theoretical bases. The participants in this research are 60 freshmen of non-English majors who were admitted into Zhejiang Normal University in 2006. All the participants were randomly divided into two equivalent groups. One, altogether 30 students, took in the project as the experimental group, which was exposed to Cooperative Learning approach and the other 30, as the control group, received traditional teacher-centered instruction. Both groups were proved to have no significant difference at all aspects by adopting a pretest before the experiment. Three hypotheses were addressed in this experimental research: (1) There is no difference in terms of academic achievements between control group and experimental group after the experiment. (2) There is significant difference in oral production between students in control group and experimental group after the experiment. (3) Cooperative learning approach can greatly influence students' attitudes towards language learning.Through the analysis on tests scores, classroom observations, and interviews, the research indicates that, after a 16-week experiment, the students with Cooperative Learning didn't made greater progress than those with traditional teacher-centered learning approach in terms of their listening, vocabulary, reading and writing. However, higher marks were achieved in the oral tests by students of Cooperative Learning class, in which they were given more opportunities to speak when cooperating with group mates. Furthermore, Cooperative Learning created a more relaxing atmosphere for students, in which their interests and confidence were improved considerably. Finally, the thesis arrives at a conclusion on the basis of the research that Cooperative Learning is an effective approach in college English teaching in Chinese context. In addition, the researcher also discussed the limitations of the research and put forward suggestions for further studies.