Application Of Cooperative Learning In English Reading For Rural Junior Middle Schools

English learning has become an important factor for the globalization development of China. As more people get deeper understanding of the importance in English learning, English teaching and learning present higher requirements for both teachers and students. How to effectively improve the accuracy of English reading is the main task for both teachers and students. The New English Curriculum Standard explicitly points out that teachers should encourage the students to find out the rules of the language through experience, practice, participation, inquiry and cooperation under the guidance of teachers, and it also promotes the students to master the knowledge and skills in order to form effective learning strategies and to develop the students’ autonomous learning ability. (教育部,2012) With the teaching background, cooperative learning has become a model of learning for the teachers to display the students’ dominant status. Cooperative learning means students can achieve a particular goal through cooperation and communication, this kind of learning model can integrate different learning methods and ideas so that it helps both the teachers and students to choose the most effective method to achieve the particular objective.In the process of English teaching, poor English reading ability has become an significant factor which restricts the development of the student’s English learning. In big cities, a lot of schools have their own special reading rooms and it is good for students to find interesting articles and stories after class in order to stimulate the students to do the active reading. But in the rural areas, the schools do not have reading rooms or kinds of reading materials for students to broaden their visions. So the English reading ability of the rural school students stays at a lower level, but the effective application of cooperative learning in English reading has alleviated this phenomenon. The main purpose of this research is to study what are the positive factors and then how to effectively implement cooperative learning in English reading in rural junior middle school and whether the cooperative learning has a positive impact on English reading in rural schools. The participants in this research were eighty students in two classes from Baihe Jingzhou Middle School in Hanyuan, Ya’an city. There are forty students in experimental class and cooperative learning was adopted in English reading. The controlled class also owns forty students and traditional teaching model was adopted in English reading. Through a semester of study, the author collected reliable data from the experiment by using questionnaire, pre-test, post test and interviews. Here are the results and implications from the research.1. Cooperative learning in English reading has positive effects for students of all levels in rural junior middle school, especially for the low-level students. To the high-level students, cooperative learning encourages them to help other students during learning and reminds them to accept different opinions fromother students. It is good for them to establish team consciousness andimprove the learning efficiency in the communication. For the low-level students, cooperative learning in English reading is helpful for them to find out the interest of learning English through constant help and encouragement of the teacher and other students. It is important for them to establish self-confidence on their study.2. Cooperative learning in English reading has positive effects for teachers. The teachers do not need to speak in all the class and they can enjoy the fun in the cooperative learning class. The teacher can make better understanding about every student’s advantage through the cooperation among the students and it is good for both teachers and students to establish good relationship.3. In order to effectively implement cooperative learning in English reading in rural junior middle school, the teacher should consider some factors. When the students choose their favorite group, the teacher should makeadjustments according to the student’s learning level, gender, age and so on in order to make all the groups have the same standard and it is good to perform the competition among the groups. While the students do the cooperative learning, the teachers need to remind the students to establish the team consciousness and inspire the high-level students to help the low-level students and make all the students participate in the activities to achieve the same goal. During the cooperation, the teachers should give the students enough time to discuss and also pay attention to whether the students talk about the main task and the teacher should give the opportunity to each of the group to express their ideas. At last, the teacher should give the students affirmation and encouragement timely.