A Research On Cooperative Learning In Senior High English Class

With the polularization of the New English Curriculum Standards (Experimental Edition) and the New Curriculum Reform, Cooperative Learning has become an increasingly popular teaching strategy and also a popular trend of modern high school teaching. Cooperative Learning is a kind of teaching theory and strategy system based on group work, which has been widely applied in the English teaching recently. However, it has not achieved the expected result in senior English teaching practice. Under the pressure of college entrance examinations, quite a number of teachers and students tend to question Cooperative Learning, which results in the low efficiency of teaching and learning. Therefore, it is important to explore an effective method to promote Cooperative Learning.This thesis first gives a brief introduction to Cooperative Learning and revelent theories, then after summarizing the present situation of Cooperative Learning, proposes a new method that combines competition with Cooperative Learning and then carries out a research on the effects of this method on English learning in high school. The study was conducted in senior one at Shaxi Senior High School in the autumn semester of 2010, with class 10 as experimental group while class 5 as control group. The mode of"competitive-cooperative"learning was applied in the experimental class while the conventional cooperative learning method was adopted in the control class. The data of this study was got mainly from questionnaire responses, tests, interviews and classroom observation notes. The result of data analysis indicates that:1. The students in experimental class show stronger interest in Cooperative Learning than the control class after adopting the new method, which indicates that competition effectively stimulates students'motivation of cooperating in study.2. The classroom observation notes indicate that compared with the control group, the students in experimental class take a more active part in Cooperative Learning, and therefore they finish their learning tasks more effectively and succcessfully with the competitive spirit.3. According to the data, the English academic score in experimental class is higher than the control class, which shows that the"competitive-cooperative"learning helps to improve students'academic scores.4. The relationship in both experimental class and control class hasn't changed obviously after the experiment, however, the students having difficulty in English learning have built up confidence and their relation with classmates has been improved.With the above findings, conclusions can be drawn that the application of the"competitive-cooperative"learning method can enhance students'motivation of Cooperative Learning, promote competitive spirit and cooperative consciousness and improve students'academic scores as well as their relations. The author hopes the results of the research can offer certain implications for other instructors engaged in high school English teaching to solve their students'Cooperative Learning problems.