A Study On The Application Of Cooperative Learning To English Vocabulary Teaching In Primary School

With the rapid development of globalization, English, as a world-wide used language, has been paid more and more attention. Vocabulary plays a significant role in second language learning. However, the current situation of English vocabulary teaching in primary school is not optimistic. There are many problems existing in the teaching process which cause the vocabulary teaching inefficient. For this reason, this research applies cooperative learning to make primary English vocabulary teaching more effective.Cooperative learning, advocated by many American scholars, such as Slavin and Johnson, has been proved to be one of the creative and effective learning theories. It stresses the learner-centered class, in which students can help each other to achieve the common goal. It can also reduce the pressure on the students, promote students’ initiative to finish assignments and develop students’ ability of cooperation and autonomous learning. This research tries to apply cooperative learning to English vocabulary teaching in the primary school.The research questions of this research are as follows:1. Can cooperative learning cultivate students’ interests of learning vocabulary?2. Can the application of cooperative learning to primary English vocabulary teaching improve students’ English vocabulary achievement?In order to address these research questions, the research was conducted at Wangzhuangzi Primary School in Tangshan City, lasting for sixteen weeks. Sixty-five students are chosen from two classes of Grade five as the participants. One of the classes with 33 students was selected as the control group and the other class with 32 students as experimental group. Through pre-test, it can be seen that students are at the same English level. The material is PEP Primary English published by People’s Education Press. And four types of instruments are involved in this research,including questionnaire, tests, interview and the SPSS software. After the teaching experiment, the data are collected and analyzed.Through data analysis, it can be concluded that: 1) cooperative learning can cultivate learners’ interests in vocabulary learning. Through group working, students become more confident and active in learning vocabulary; 2) the application of cooperative learning to primary English vocabulary teaching can improve students’ English vocabulary achievement. Moreover, their English scores have been improvedaccordingly. To sum up, this research has proved that cooperative learning can make vocabulary teaching in primary school more efficient.