Research On The Effectiveness Of Cooperative Learning To Senior1High School Students In The English Class-----An Experimental Study Of Nanjiao Middle School In Xianyang

According to the Decision on Reform and Development of Elementary Education distributed to lower levels by the State Council (2001), schools in most areas of China have began to carry out the Quality-Oriented Education. Many advanced teaching methodologies have been introduced from America and European countries to our national education system, such as cooperative learning (CL).Cooperative learning is a modern learning concept which stresses more on the interaction of Ss. Interaction is the major means of Ss’ learning in line with new English course standard put forward. The interactive view differs from traditional teaching method, which is not confined in the interaction between the teacher and students. It also consists of teacher-to-teacher interaction and students-to-students interaction. The fundamental advantage of CL is that Ss’ interests can be easily triggered by the kind of interaction or team work. Thus the major point for teachers in English class is to design multiple activities based on the teaching objectives and Ss’ abilities.However, with the application of CL method in the real classroom teaching, some problems exposed:Firstly, more emphasis on "learning" while less stress on "cooperation", few teachers only confined "cooperation" as a way to "learn", which means the real and internal spirit of cooperative learning is not clearly understood. Obviously, there is another important value of CL, which is to cultivate cooperative consciousness and practice cooperative skill to adapt to the competing society. Secondly, more emphasis on "form" and less stress on "effectiveness", the atmosphere of the classroom is so lively while the rationality of content and design of CL is lack of consideration. Furthermore, there is less space left for Ss to think over by themselves during the process of cooperating.The author did the related research and finally found the instructive theoretical systems, which are the social interdependent theory and motivational theory respectively. As for the social interdependent theory, the group members should learn to share the responsibility and rely on each other because they are almost in the same boat. No one in the group can win by himself. Motivational theory has something to do with SIT, which also calls for the interdependence and common goal. Therefore, the purpose of the present study is to implement a research based on the basic theoretical system. With the empirical research in a senior high school, the author found out the possible problems existing in the students in Grade One of Nanjiao Senior High school and provided some helpful suggestions for the youngteachers.There are80students involved in this experiment.40students are in the experimental group and the other40students are in the controlled group. In order to make sure that the experiment’s validity and provide enough proof that the cooperative learning do help to create a more relaxed learning atmosphere which results in more effective learning results, the two groups had a pre-test in the beginning of the experiment. The results showed that the two groups are in the same level of English ability.The author did the research with a lot of reliable instruments.The questionnaires are respectively designed for the teachers and students. All the questions were designed for finding the objectives’attitude towards CL and their perspectives. The author should present great gratitude to all of the students and teachers who are involved in this survey, especially the English teacher who helped out with the collection of the data.The interview was done at the end of this term. Both the students and the teachers were involved in this interview. The author took down notes carefully while listening to the interviewees. After the data collection, the author made a conclusion of their comments on CL, in which the advantages and obstacles are co-exist.For the classroom observation, the author did it for three phases. They are the beginning of the experiment, the interim of the experiment, and the end of the experiment. At the beginning, the two groups are almost in the same level from their classroom performance. However, at the end of the experiment, the Ss in the EG are more active than the Ss in the CGAfter a whole semester’s experiment with the instructions of interview, classroom observation, questionnaires and pre-test and post-test, the results witness that the students’ performances in the experimental group are much better than before both in linguistic competence and communicative competence. Therefore the author concluded that cooperative learning has a good influence on improving the effectiveness of learning. However, the major findings revealed that some problems still block the way to implement cooperative learning maximumly. The reasons are generally the limited understanding of this method and the exam-oriented teaching environments. So the author of this thesis has figured out the problems and provided some possible suggestions according to the whole experiment.The major problems of CL are that the teacher can not have a powerful control of the whole class at the time of discussion or in other student-oriented activities. What’s more, because of interdependence, some lazy students are not willing to take the responsibility. The group becomes their safe refuge.According to this situation, the author has provided some useful suggestions. To begin with, the seat arrangement can be rearranged based on the characteristics of each Ss. Then the teacher should select a responsible leader to be in charge of the group. Finally, the teacher should form a habit of self-feedback both after class and during the class.