A Study Of The Effects On Students’English Learning Motivation And Performance Exerted By Cooperative Learning In Reading Teaching In Senior Middle School

Almost all the countries throughout the world advocate that student-centered teaching method should be adopted to contribute to the optimal development of students especially the ability to put what they have learned to get, deal with, analyze information,solve problems and communicate.Besides,the New Curriculum Standard of Senior English for China has put more emphasis on the importance of students’good English learning strategies,autonomous ability and cooperative learning ability. To achieve the goal, English teaching should resort to cooperative teaching" method focusing on the demands of students and individual differences, in which harmonious, pleasing and democratic learning atmosphere should be provided and diverse teaching method should be adopted to arouse students’interest, learning motivation and build up their confidence to enable them to form a strong willpower to overcome difficulties,and in which learning strategies should be trained and autonomous learning abilities as well as cooperative learning ability should be fostered to improve students’learning efficiency, thus serving their long-term and lifelong development. Reading,which is a big channel for students to learn integrated language and accumulate information, should be effectively exploited to achieve teaching and learning goals. However, in the current English reading teaching, many teachers still take the traditional "spoon-fed" single teaching paradigm, seriously worsening English language learning enthusiasm of students’, especially senior high school students’, who seem to learn passively, be less motivated and memorize mechanically. So, the empirical research conducted in the thesis connected with "cooperative reading teaching method" is necessary. Based on the theory and practice, the author discusses how to conduct cooperative reading teaching in senior high school English,and the effects of this teaching method on students’English learning motivation, strategies and Enlgish performance, on the basis of which the referential suggestions on how to conduct cooperative learning method in reading teaching in senior high school English will be given to provide empirical reference for future English teachers to help achieve the goal that English language teaching is people-oriented, promoting students’ long-term and lifelong development.This paper reviews the related literature:leaning motivation at home and abroad, domestic and foreign language motivation researches and discoveries in teaching Perspective, research achievements in cooperative learning and reading teaching, thus providing theoretical bases and empirical references for the study of the cooperative reading teaching in the thesis. Then the author carried out empirical research methods, with senior2students from two classes of the same level taught as experimental subjects, combined with PEP high school English compulsory book5and6as the teaching material. For a period of one semester or4-month teaching experiment, the author used " cooperative reading teaching method"in the experimental class in which learning plan guidance was used to make it easy for students to develop reading strategies,self-learning and cooperate with others.While in the control class the author followed the traditional reading teaching method", in which the teacher dominated the learning acitivities in the classroom,explained the word usage, translated the sentences and the students were required to read and memorize the words expressions and the notes. The vocabulary was learned in isolation, and little attention was drawn to the students’emotion, individual differences and the guidance of learning strategies. Through questionnaires respectively before and after the experiment,the author got to know what students’English learning motivation was like,how learning strategies were used in the experimental class and how students’English learning motivation and learning strategies were influenced in in the pretest and posttest; Through performance testing, the author understood the students’ English performance in the pre-test and post-test results and what changes took place in the English language performance. The quantitative analyses of the data collected in the questionnaires about students’learning motivation and strategies and the data about students’English achievement and the correlations about the students’learning motivation, strategies and students’English achievement in the pre-test and protest were conducted with the aid of the SPSS17.0social statistics and analysis software. It turns out that compared with the experimental class itself or the control class, the students in the experimental class show a stronger learning motivation (integrative, instrumental, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation), especially integrative and intrinsic motivation, and more frequently use English learning strategies and have a better performance in English; cooperative reading teaching method is better than tradional reading teaching method to stimulate students’ learning motivation and pays more attention to the guidance of learning strategies. Stronger learning motivation, especially integrative and intrinsic motivation and frequent use of learning motivation significantly have positive correlations with students’ English achievement.; In the light of the analysis results, there is no good or bad motivation. Integrative, instrumental, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are all positively correlated with students’achievements and can exert promoting effects on their English learning. Integrative and intrinsic motivation play a greater role than others. The promoting function of a composite motivation is greater than that of any single kind.Therefore, it can be concluded that" cooperative reading teaching method" is better to stimulate students’ learning motivation and develop students’ self-learning ability and cooperative learning ability than "tradional reading teaching method". Based on the research results, the thesis provides some suggestions for senior high school English reading teaching.