A Study Of The Application Of Cooperative Learning In College Extensive Reading Courses

English learning can be divided into four parts, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. Reading, as an important part of the whole learning procedure, stands not only a kind of English learning ability, but also a way to obtain knowledge. Students can have a better understanding of the culture of English speaking countries. Meanwhile though reading, students will get promoted comprehensively. Cooperative learning is recognized as a type of innovative and effective system of learning theories and strategies, for it is aimed to develop learners’ communicative competence and cooperative skills, to improve the classroom atmosphere and to raise their achievements. Cooperative learning introduced in English extensive reading classes, can change the traditional “teacher-centered” classrooms into the “student-centered and teacher-leading” ones. Besides, it helps to activate the classroom atmosphere and to inspire students? interest and initiative in the learning of English extensive reading course, which, ultimately, effectively enhances the English teaching quality and facilitates the realization of the teaching goals. This paper, in the first place, makes an introduction of the research significance including the theoretical and practical significance, and then explains cooperative learning strategy from the aspects of its definition, essential elements as well as its historical study. A brief description is given about the concept and characteristics of extensive reading course of college English major. Afterwards, some major organizational forms of applying cooperative learning to English extensive reading class and its potential advantages together with theoretical basis are comprehensively analyzed. Based on the study on the cooperative learning strategy and English extensive reading course, the author, using questionnaires, makes a survey on how the subjects perceive and comprehend the cooperative learning method in the perspective of its five basic factors. And the results show that students have basically understood the connotation of cooperative learning theory, but do not fully realize the importance of the element of individual accountability. Therefore, the author believes that the teacher should strengthen the theoretical education to students, so that they can have a more compound and comprehensive perception of cooperative learning and its value. Then, the author, by making interviews to the English extensive reading teachers, learns about the current teaching situation of English extensive reading course and problems existing. For example, most teachers still adopt the traditional teacher-centered teaching mode in their extensive reading classes; students in such classrooms feel oppressive and constrained, and have low confidence and efficiency in learning this course. What?s worse, few opportunities are provided for them to make interactions with their teacher and classmates, to take part in class activities and practice oral English. As for these problems mentioned above, the author makes reason analysis. Besides, the author makes an investigation into how well cooperative learning is applied in the extensive reading class, and whether it achieves good efficiency, and then gives a detailed and careful analysis of the data collected. The survey results indicate that the application situation of cooperative learning seem good, and it does make impact on improving the class atmosphere and strengthening students? interest and confidence in learning the extensive reading course. What?s more, students gain more chance to participate in class activities and practice spoken English. At the same time, some problems that need to be paid attention to appear during the application process of cooperative learning in the extensive reading class. For example, the cooperative learning content selection and the activity design are not scientific enough; grouping of cooperative learning groups is still unreasonable; the role division within the cooperative learning group seems not clear enough to all group members; the teacher is not sure about his or her role position in the class when using cooperative learning method. While, if these problems are not resolved timely and reasonably, cooperative learning under this situation, will become a mere formality, and will not acquire better effect. What?s worse, it will even drain students of their enthusiasm in the extensive reading class, and the teaching quality and the learning effectiveness of students will also be affected. Finally, based on the elaboration and analysis of the problems occurring during the application process, the author comes up with several suggestions on how to solve these problems and improve the application of cooperative learning in English extensive reading class.This thesis can be divided into six chapters:The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the current situation of extensive reading courses and the background and significance of the thesis.The second chapter concludes researches and theories that are related to cooperative learning and serves as a foundation for the whole thesis.The third chapter introduces some basic elements of application of cooperative learning in extensive reading course, the types and factors of cooperative learning and so on.The fourth chapter is the most important part of the thesis, which describes the whole experiment in detail and collects data of the experiment. This thesis takes the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods as its research methods and takes two Grade 2 classes in JLA University as researching subjects, one of which is set as a control class and the other one being as the experiment class. Meanwhile the author also interviews the teacher who teaches the two classes and gets some feedbacks. The author also do questionnaires to see what the students really feel about the application of cooperative learning in extensive reading classes.The fifth chapter gives a further analysis of the results from the last chapter and points out the advantages of applying cooperative learning in extensive reading course and the problems that exist in extensive reading course.The last chapter serves as a conclusion for the whole thesis and points out the problems in cooperative learning and gives suggestions for further studies.