The Application Of Cooperative Learning In Oral English Teaching In Junior School

Nowadays, as the development of internationalization and China’s open policy, Englishteaching has already become quite important from elementary schools to universities. ButEnglish oral ability doesn’t get enough corresponding value.“Dumb English” still exist inmany areas. The main reason is that most examinations, from daily tests to high schoolentrance examination, contain no tests to oral ability. But this phenomenon can’t satisfy theneed of international communication or the demand of the New Curriculum Standards.In order to provide students more chances to communicate in a relatively real situationand therefore improve their oral ability, the writer decided to make a classroom experimenton a new teaching method------cooperative learning. After reading some materials on oralEnglish teaching and cooperative learning, the writer began a semester’s experiment byadopting cooperative learning activities in oral English teaching in the experimental class------one of the two parallel classes that the writer is teaching in No.2Middle School in DouYu Town in Luan Cheng County, Shijiazhuang. While in the other class, the control class, thetraditional teaching form was used continually. The whole research focused on theapplication of cooperative learning in oral English classes in junior high school. From all thecooperative learning activities, the writer chose Team-Games-Tournament (TGT) method asthe main method. The instruments of the research are questionnaires, tests and a comparativeclassroom experiment. There are following features in the writer’s cooperative learninggroups.(1) Each group is made up by four students and the group members are fixed.(2) The group is heterogeneous.(3) The competition among groups is set to encourage each group to cooperateeffectively.(4) Every member in each group has a post and changes every month.(5)The students are equipped with some cooperative and post skills at the verybeginning and after the change in each month.The main feature of the writer’s experiment is that cooperation is adequately used in eachgroup, but competition among groups is set to inspire the students’ motivation to work better in their groups. This is suitable for junior high school oral English teaching and receivesobvious effect.From the comparison of the result of the pre-test and the post-test, it is clear that thestudents’ oral ability in experimental class has been greatly improved. Meanwhile, thestudents in the experimental class have more motivation and self-confidence in expressingtheir own ideas than before. This was proved by the information from questionnaires and thestudents’ participation in classroom English learning activities.