An Experimental Study Of Cooperative Learning In English Teaching Of Secondary Vocational Schools

Cooperative Learning,as a teaching theory and strategy, originated in the 1970 s in the United States. It is widely known as one of the most important and successful teaching reforms in recent decades mainly owing to its innovation and efficiency. Cooperative Learning focuses on student-centeredness, with students working in groups in classrooms, aiming to stimulate students’ initiative and facilitate their cooperative spirit in the teaching process. As a branch of Constructivism, which emphasizes the significance of the individual psychological construction, and the fact that learning should be acquired by learners under certain surroundings, with the help of others, and with necessary learning materials through construction of meanings, Cooperative Learning also believes that learning can be done within the cooperation of learners, instead of with the teachers’ education in class. According to the up-to date English Curriculum for Secondary Vocational Schools, English teachers should pay enough attention to the student-centeredness, and try to create a friendly and harmonious classroom atmosphere, so as to activate students’ interest and initiative, and consequently improve their learning effect. However, investigations show that the teaching method adopted by quite a lot of English teachers at secondary vocational schools at present is still the traditional teaching method. It stresses teacher-centeredness, with students receiving knowledge passively. This traditional teaching method has caused more and more students lose their interest in learning English and poor learning results. Meanwhile, literature surveys show that there has been a large quantity of theoretical and empirical research related to Cooperative Learning in the educational field, which has also produced fruitful findings. Comparatively speaking, studies concerning the application of Cooperative Learning, particularly experimental studies, in English teaching in secondary vocational schools are far from enough. Therefore, this study might be of great significance and necessity for reforming and better improving English teaching in secondary vocational schools.This paper is based on an experimental study, which lasted for one school term. The subjects were chosen from the author’s two natural classes, Grade One, from a secondary vocational school in Yantai, with 60 students in each class respectively, and equal English proficiency level. One of the classes was regarded as the experimental class, and the other the controlled class. In regular English classes, the experimental class was taught with the cooperative learning model, whereas the controlled class was taught with the traditional teaching method, with other variables remaining the same. The major research questions include:(1) compared with the traditional English teaching method, can the cooperative learning model better improve students’ English learning achievements?(2) Compared with the traditional English teaching method, can the cooperative learning model better enhance students’ English learning interest and motivation? Based on the contrastive analysis of the pre-test results and post-test results of the English proficiency tests and questionnaires, the main findings are as follows:Firstly, the average English score of the experimental class in the post-test increased to 83.4, while the controlled class had only 75.2 on average, which shows that compared with the traditional English teaching method, the cooperative learning model, to a large extent, can better improve students’ English learning achievements. Secondly,according to the statistics of the questionnaires, more than 88% of the students of the experimental class were more interested and motivated in learning English. In contrast, the level of interest of the controlled class was still quite low, remaining almost the same as before. Therefore, we might say that the cooperative learning model, to a large extent, was more popular with the students.In conclusion, the above-mentioned experimental research findings might show basically that the application of cooperative learning to English teaching in secondary vocational schools is feasible, which can better improve classroom teaching quality and efficiency.