An Empirical Study On The Application Of Cooperative Learning To English Teaching In High Schools

As a relatively newly-emerged learning approach, cooperative learning has been gaining popularity among countries with the pushing ahead of the New Curriculum Reform, leading to its widespread availability in teaching practices. China’s State Council Decision on Reformation and Development of Basic Education shed light on its supportive view that cooperative learning should be advocated in teaching practice so as to facilitate mutual exchange and common development between students and teachers. In addition, the New Curriculum Standards (2003) points out without ambiguity that students are expected to be involved in a range of activities where they can learn via communication and cooperation with their peers on the basis of their interests and previous knowledge. In real classroom setting, however, some senior English teaching is merely confined to pouring language knowledge and indirect experience into students. In some other cases, although cooperative learning is paid attention to, certain problems lead to insufficient cooperation such as motivation deficiency, superficial contents, simplex interactions and skill deficiency.To probe into the application of cooperative learning to senior English teaching, the researcher conducted the empirical study for a whole semester from February to July in2013in a middle school and thus this thesis is born, where group achievement presentation is taken as a forceful example to verify the following three hypotheses. First, students hold positive attitudes towards cooperative learning in senior English teaching. Second, cooperative learning approach is effective to improve students’academic performances. Third, cooperative learning has positive impacts on the English study of the students with learning difficulties.To confirm the validity of the hypotheses, the thesis touches on a historical overview of the relevant researches at home and abroad centering on aspects like the formation and development, definitions, basic elements and methods of cooperative learning. Following it is the expatiation of the typical theoretical bases of cooperative learning:social interdependence theory and constructive learning theory. Based on these theories, the researchers launched data collection and analysis with the aid of questionnaires, follow-up investigation, interviews, tests, classroom observations and case analysis. During the process, the problems arising in cooperative learning are made a comparatively thorough inquiry into, with group achievement presentation serving as a favorable example and proof. Factually, researches into group achievement presentation are mainly the target for college teachers, while it is not so often explored by senior teachers. So the researcher chose to probe into the application of cooperative learning in senior English teaching, starting from classroom observations of group achievement presentations in view of its significance in senior English classes. After reflections upon the problems and the successful case of group achievement presentation, the researcher also got some feedback gathered from interviews and put forward some teaching advice concluded as "Four Steps and Three Elements", which make up a successful cooperative lesson.The study indicates that students on the whole hold positive attitudes towards cooperative learning approach; cooperative learning approach is effective in improving students’academic performances; cooperative learning has positive impacts on the English study of the students with learning difficulties.