Effectiveness Of Cooperative Learning In Junior High School Oral English Teaching

With the fast development of economic globalization and educational reform, theimplementation of the New Curriculum Standard witnesses the advances. English ismuch more emphasized as a second language and a useful communication tool to ourChinese people. English study will accompany us in our whole learning period fromprimary school to university. Although it is much more mentioned, people still pay lessattention to speaking and listening than reading and writing. The author considers thatoral English is the most comprehensive one in four English elementary skills. OralEnglish ability actually contains the content of listening, reading and writing. Atpresent there are many reasons why many students are in the condition of dumb English.To avoid such situation, students need good language foundation and psychologicalquality to speak fluent English. Oral English includes accurate pronunciation, goodintonation, accurate choice of words and correct grammar. Psychological quality asksstudents to have the courage to say and to communicate, not to be afraid of makingmistakes. Language can not be improved fast; it is a constant process of accumulation.The first step that students should do is to dare to say, then to communicate withothers continuously and to improve their language using skills in the process of thecommunication.Due to the situations of Chinese students’ learning in class, we need to pay muchattention to improve the efficiency of classroom teaching. Cooperative learning isregarded as an effective teaching strategy by many experts and scholars. This teachingstrategy is based on inter group homogeneity and heterogeneity within the group, theinterdependence between team members, and the assigned learning tasks among theteam members.This thesis mainly discusses the effectiveness of cooperative learning in oralEnglish teaching in junior high school, which is combining with the knowledge leveland the psychological characteristics of junior high school students. It includes twoparts, the knowledge level and psychological level. Knowledge level refers to theaccuracy of the pronunciation, fluency of the language expression, and mastering ofgrammar. Psychological level means whether cooperative learning can increasestudents’ interest in learning English, establish their confidence of expression in oralEnglish, and improve their interpersonal skills.The subjects of the study are from two classes in Junior Two. One is theexperiment class; the other is the controlled class. The experimental class adopts cooperative learning method and the controlled class still uses the traditional teachingmethod that teacher asks and students answer. The whole experiment includes pre-test,post-test, and questionnaires. The results show that cooperative learning can improveoral English level of junior two students, help to reduce language anxiety of students,and cultivate their cooperative consciousness. Students with low scores likecooperative learning more and improve faster than those high score students.