The Application Of Cooperative Learning To The Teaching Of English Reading In Senior High School

Cooperative learning is regarded as one of the most popular teaching strategies. Many researches at home and abroad have proved that cooperative learning plays an active part in improving ability to communicate effectively with each other in class, academic achievement of students and stimulating the development of the student's good non-cognitionCooperative learning is a kind of class technique that encourages students to perform all kinds of learning activities in groups of four to six. It emphasizes the student-centered class, in which the teacher plays a role of director, cooperator, and attempts to enhance teacher-student and student-student interactions.On the basis of previous theoretic researches, the author conducted an experiment on the teaching of English reading, the aim of which is to verify the active function of the cooperative learning in improving students'English reading. The subjects are 96 grade one students in a senior high school in two classes from a normal school in Hohhot. The period of the experiment is five months. Two classes of the same English level were chosen, one experimental class, the other control class. Cooperative teaching reading was used in the experimental class, while traditional method was used in the control class. After the experiment, the two classes were given the same test and the scores were analyzed by SPSS statistical package. The conclusions drawn from the experiment are that the students in class experimental have improved their reading ability more than those in the control class. Moreover, student'interest, motivation, self-confidence, and social skill are also improved in the experimental class, which also shows that the cooperative learning approach is very efficient and helpful in the teaching of English reading.The paper consists of six chapters. Chapter one is the introduction to the purposes and the significance of this paper. Chapter two is a brief review of literature, including the definition, important elements, the advantages of cooperation learning, and theoretical bases of cooperation Learning, In chapter three the writer explores in detail how the cooperative teaching method is applied to English reading teaching. A small-scale experimental research is described and discussed in chapter four. In chapter five, the author points out some problems in implementing cooperative language learning, and the direction of future research as well as the summary of the paper.