A Study Of The Effect Of Group Cooperative Learning On English Writing For Students With Different Cognitive Styles In Senior High School

In the research field of language learning and teaching, Cooperative Learning (CL) isgaining more and more attention in the last decade. Cooperative learning refers to a systemof teaching and learning strategies, which take small groups as the basic form of theclassroom structure, requiring interaction among group members engaging in tasks inwhich all members have something to contribute to and learn from other members.Cooperative Learning, as one of the most successful reforms in teaching and learning inthe last decade, focuses on the awareness of cooperation among students and the increasingimportance of the dominant role that students themselves should play. The purpose ofcooperative learning is to elicit the most optimal learning effect for each student whilereducing their learning stress.However, there are different cognitive styles among students. Can CL meet thedemands of different cognitive styles? This study focuses on the effect of cooperativelearning on English writing for students with different cognitive styles in the senior highschool so as to optimize each student’s learning effect in writing.The author illustrates Cooperative Learning by studying the achievements made in thefield both home and abroad. A general survey is made on the related researches and studieson CL and learners’ cognitive styles. Then, by means of educational experiments,classroom testing, questionnaire analysis as well as textual analysis, the author moves on todiscuss the results of the experiment, the changes in the subjects’ attitude, and their abilityin writing after the adoption of CL.Through two months’ observation and experiment, this writer discovers the followingfindings: Firstly, cooperative learning has some positive impacts on the attitude of studentswith different cognitive styles in writing, especially on field-dependent students. Secondly, CL style of teaching can improve English writing ability for both field-dependent andfield-independent students. The field-dependent students benefit comparatively more fromCL style of teaching. Thirdly, students with different cognitive styles attain differentimprovement regarding specific aspects in writing. For the field-independent students, theyachieve less in terms of sentence structures and logics, while their counterparts, thefield-dependent students, achieve better results in almost all aspects of writing. Both typesdo well in fluency despite complexity.Finally, suggestions based on the results of the study are given to teachersinterested in adopting cooperative learning to improve the effect for teaching writing tostudents with different cognitive styles.