A Study Of Cooperative Learning In Urban Primary School English Reading Of Grade Three

For a long time, reading has been the important part in English teaching. It has also taken the unshakeable position in English study or the usage of English. Nowadays, the primary school English teaching has been extensively developed in our country. With the diversification of education and the update of education concept, reading teaching has met a great challenge. In urban primary schools, students of grade one and two often playing, listening, speaking and making conversations to learn English. While from grade three, reading plays a more prominent role, and reading takes almost half scores of the whole unified test paper. It is important to know how urban primary schools’ students learn English reading. Cooperative learning is advocated as one of the important concepts to English teaching by New Curriculum Reform of our country, which advocates studying and learning based on participation, cooperation and communication. Primary school period, as an important foundational stage of compulsory education, it is especially important to implement cooperative learning as New Curriculum Reform proposed.Lots of empirical studies in cooperative learning have proved that cooperative learning does increase students’ interest in learning English reading and strengthen their cooperative learning consciousness as well as effectively improve their reading ability. However, lots of empirical studies abroad and in China are carried out in high schools or primary schools of higher grades but none of them have used cooperative learning in primary schools’ English reading of grade three. Hence based on the background of New Curriculum Reform and English subject’s characteristics in primary schools, this research deeply investigated the present reading situation in urban primary school of grade three. And it focuses on discovering the changes that cooperative learning can bring to both teachers and students. This study applies multiple methods which involve two questionnaires for teachers, two questionnaires for students, three times’ interviews for both students and teachers respectively as well as twice classroom observation. The data in the questionnaires and interviews showed that cooperative learning can help primary school English reading teaching of grade three and it has positive influence both on teachers and students. The findings in this study help to know more about primary school English reading and cooperative learning. This study fills in the gaps in cooperative learning in primary school English reading of grade three. What’s more, it offers a better guidance for teachers’ practical reading teaching and some suggestions for the future study.