A Study Of Small Group Discussion And English Learning In English Classrooms Of Senior High Schools

The tasks of the New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High Schoolissued by Ministry of Education of P.R of China in2001are “to arouse and developstudents’ interest in learning English, to make the students build self-confidence, toget into a good learning habit and effective learning strategy, to develop theirautonomous learning ability and cooperative spirit, to make the students mastercertain basic English knowledge and skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing,to form certain integrated language ability” and the overall goal of it is to cultivatethe students’ ability of integrated language using. This requires teachers to change thetraditional “spoon-feeding” teaching method into cooperative learning, especiallysmall group discussion and emphasize learning through doing. Lots of research andexperiment both abroad and at home show that cooperative learning in small group isa kind of effective teaching method adopted widely by many countries in the world,which improved the students’ learning interest and cultivated students’ learningautonomy and cooperative spirit.The implementation of the new curriculum promoted our country’s educationand teaching, but the situation of our English education is not satisfactory, especiallyin some remote counties. In order to know the current implementation of cooperativelearning, especially small group discussion in English classrooms teaching of aremote county middle school, the author described and studied the implementation ofsmall group discussion in senior English classrooms teaching of a remote countymiddle school, in Jilin province.Based on literature review, by doing classroom observation, questionnaire surveyand interview, the author further understood the current implementation of Smallgroup discussion in English classroom teaching of the remote county middle schoolwhere the author has helped to teach. The author found that small group discussiondid improve the students’ learning interest and cultivate the students’ learningautonomy and cooperative spirit, but some problems still existed. So the author putforward some suggestions so as to let the teachers and students better understand theessence of cooperative learning, especially small group discussion, master the skillsand strategy of it. The author hopes, by investigating and studying the implementation of Small group discussion in English classroom teaching, to further improve theeffectiveness of small group discussion and promote the teaching in remote countymiddle school.