Improvement Of The Application Of Constructivism And Cooperative Learning To The Poor-based English Learners In Senior High School

English, which has been used as world language, has become the vital and practical tool in people's daily life and work. With the development of economy and progress of society in our country, there appear higher requirements for English. The English Curriculum Standard indicates that all the teaching should advocate experience, practice, participation, collaborative and communicative learning style and task-oriented approach based on learners' interests, life experience and cognitive level, aiming at developing learners'comprehensive abilities. The Standard also indicates that reading ability, which is one of the four basic language skills, has become the most important one to be developed and improved in English teaching. Therefore, whether teachers could adopt the effective teaching models is the key to improving students'reading abilities.This research was carried out in the author's two parallel English classes of Senior 2. One of the classes was appointed as the experimental class and the other one as the control class. The study which was under the guidance of student-centered theory of Constructivism and made use of cooperative learning model, lasted for five months. Four kinds of data collecting methods—pre-test and post-test, interview, and questionnaires were used in the study. During the experiment, students in the control class were taught in the traditional way, while the experimental class was organized and taught in the form of cooperative learning groups. Under such relaxed learning environment, all the group members would take their own responsibilities and cooperate with the other members actively to achieve the shared goals of tasks or learning of their groups. Before the experiment, the levels of reading comprehension of the two classes were nearly the same, while five months later, the experimental class did obviously better than the control class. The data which was collected from the experiment also proved that students in the experimental class enlarged their vocabulary, acquired some reading strategies and skills, and enrich their background information and knowledge after the experiment. Meanwhile, they showed much more interest in English learning, especially English reading, improved their communicative abilities and cooperative abilities and had more confidence than ever before.Hence, the author draws the conclusion that cooperative learning under the guidance of Constructivism can really contribute to students' reading abilities. This teaching model is worth applying into English reading classes, and will enlighten the other forms of English teaching.