The Strategies Of Cooperative Learning In English Culture Teaching In Senior School

With the rapid development of science and technology, the whole world has been globalized. Interpersonal and international communication will become more and more frequent. However, during intercultural communication, we meet with from time to time culture shock. Different cultures will bring about different ways of life, different principles, and taboo of communication, which result in misunderstandings, even failure in intercultural communication. How to overcome these culture barriers and improve students' awareness of intercultural communication remains a main task in foreign language teaching. This thesis tends to analyze the relationship between language, culture and intercultural communication, to emphasize the necessity of culture teaching in high school English classes. In the hope of improving the students' intercultural competence, the thesis introduces an effective learning strategy in English culture teaching—cooperative learning which originated in the U.S.A in the 1970s. It analyzes the theoretical basis of cooperative learning from Goal Structure Theory, Cognitive Development Theory and Social Constructivism Theory. Then applies cooperative learning activities to foreign language and culture teaching, such as role—playing, jigsaw, group drama activity, team—games—tournament, group—investigation etc. to display the operation that the study is living in the English culture teaching.Besides, it points out the problems worth paying attention to in the process of cooperative learning. Finally, through an experiment, the author proves that compared with the traditional method, the cooperative learning strategy can help students to master English language and culture and develop the students' intercultural communicative competence more effectively.