The Application Of Cooperative Learning To English Teaching In Junior Middle School

With the rapid development of society, politics, economy and culture, it becomes more and more important for us to improve the quality of education, especially the elementary education in junior middle school. Of course, it can hardly do without improving teaching models and methods. Besides, the New Curriculum Reform Standards call for fostering new talents with cooperation and innovation. Thus, it’s a high necessity to cultivate cooperative and innovative talents for society. This relies highly on educators, especially teachers. Teachers should ensure that their own teaching styles are in style.Cooperative learning, as a new type of teaching, stresses finishing specific tasks through group work, which requires group members to help each other. It adapts to the development of society, meets the needs of education, and follows the principles of the New Curriculum Reform Standards. The thesis aims at proving the effectiveness of the application of cooperative learning in junior middle school. Besides, it emphasizes the importance of cooperative learning in classroom language teaching. The researcher mainly adopts the theoretical analysis and experimental research to answer the following questions:1. Why do we employ cooperative learning in English class in junior middle school?2. How does cooperative learning improve students’ academic achievements andcultivate their affective ability?3. How is cooperative learning perfected in English teaching?As for the experiment, four classes taught by two similar-leveled teachers from Tong Bai Experimental High School were tested through interview, questionnaire, and test comparison. In order to provide readers with authenticity and reliability, the test last for one year, which was from Sept.20 th, 2012 to Sept.20 th, 2013.From the results of the experiment, the researcher indicates that it’s effective to implement cooperative learning prevailing in the U.S in our English teaching. Totally speaking, cooperative learning can convert the traditional teaching idea. That is to say, it can transform the teacher-centered class into students-centered and the teacher-guided class. Moreover, cooperative learning can promote the reform of teaching methods. The teacher should encourage students to learn autonomously instead of infusing knowledge to them. In this way, students will enjoy the relaxing atmosphere and benefit quite a lot from it.