An Action Research On The Effectiveness Of English Group Cooperative Learning In Junior Middle School

With the change from teacher-centered to student-centered, from knowledge inputting to the skills developing in language teaching,cooperative learning is receiving more and more attention both home and abroad. Cooperative learning as an advanced teaching technique, a breakthrough and complement against traditional classroom instruction is widely applied in the instructional design of English course for school.English teaching reformation has achieved a lot during the process of quality-oriented education reform.However, not all of the group cooperative learning has achieved success as expected. The author also implemented the group cooperative learning in his two classes in Grade 8 in September 2013. Students learning enthusiasm was very high at the beginning because of the novelty of the group cooperative learning, but a month later the participation degree of the students declined and the group cooperative learning only became a “form” and didn’t play a “proper effect”.The purpose of this thesis is to improve the effectiveness of group cooperative learning through action research. First, author confirmed the causes of low efficiency of the group cooperative learning by questionnaire and classroom observations as follows:1.Group was constructed unreasonably and didn’t follow the principle of homogeneity between groups, heterogeneity within the group.2. There was no clear division of labor among members of the group.3.Group members were lack of cooperation consciousness and ability. 4. There was not a scientific, rational and effective evaluation system for group cooperative learning. Then the author put forward the hypothesis: 1.If constructing the scientific and reasonable group, the efficiency of group cooperative learning can be improved 2.If having explicit of responsibility division of labor, the efficiency of group cooperative learning can be improved.3.If training the cooperation ability of group members very well,the efficiency of group cooperative learning can be improved.4.If constructing the scientific, rational and effective evaluation system for group cooperative learning, the efficiency of group cooperation learning can be improved. That is, if students’ learning motivation can be clearer; if students’ learning interest and achievements can be improved after the research.To test the hypothesis,the author made a 10-week action research which was implemented in 6stages. During the action research, the author used classroom observation,teaching journal, and interview to monitor the action research process. At last,the author proved the hypothesis by analyzing the data of questionnaires and tests.The results of the study show that by applying effective cooperative learning, students’ interest in learning English has been significantly improved,so is the motivation of English study. The test scores are also improved which is proved by the final term test scores. That means the solutions of low efficiency of the group cooperative learning are obviously effective, the effectiveness of the group cooperative learning is improved significantly.This thesis also gives an introduction of group cooperative learning and the studies on it both home and abroad. As expected, this study will hopefully provide some more findings for those who do research in group cooperative learning and teachers teaching middle school English or other subjects.