| Cooperative learning has been considered as one of the most important and remarkable reform of theory and practice in education in the several decades. Recently, more and more people have paid much more attention to the use of cooperative learning in language learning."The new high school curriculum standards" states clearly that the ultimate goal of English teaching is to help students exchange information and finish tasks with others in English cooperatively.However, a large number of students still cannot meet the requirement of the new high school curriculum standards to communicate in English very well. The objects of the study were two classes of NO.1High School in Guangshan. Class9has82students. Class10has80students. Before the experiment, the current situation of students’oral English ability and cooperative learning were surveyed by questionnaires and tests so that we could find the problems existing in the English teaching. The fact shows that oral English ability and cooperative learning in Guangshan High Schools is not highly efficient, the confidence and enthusiasm towards English is not positive and so on. Based on the problems, we put forward a hypothesis:Whether cooperative learning has a positive effect on improving students’oral English ability or not.In order to test the hypothesis, the author takes two classes of NO.1High School in Guangshan as the objects of research for a semester. Before the experiment, the author collects information from tests and questionnaires to find the main problems in the English teaching. Then apply the cooperative learning methods, for instance, group investigation, learning together and so on to the specific activities and discuss the effect of cooperative learning on improving the students’oral English ability.After the experiment, the author compares the final term exam score with the first score and analyzes the result. The statistics prove that the cooperative learning can not only improve the ability of oral English, develop their confidence and enthusiasm towards learning English but also enhance teachers’ teaching level. However, there are many shortages due to the limited time and condition. For instance, the survey datum and questionnaires of both teachers and students is not representative; the class the author conducted is too large; the evaluation criteria of cooperative learning is difficult to grasp and so on. |
