Research On Efficiency Of Cooperative Learning In High School English Classroom

The Cooperative Learning(CL in short) has enjoyed a great popularity in English teaching. Since the early 1990 s, the Cooperative Learning has been introduced into schools in China. The New Curriculum Reform of compulsory education advocates students’ self-independence, cooperation and exploration spirit in study. Therefore, cooperative learning method has been widely used in the high schools. A number of studies have been conducted on the effects of cooperative learning, which have shown that CL is helpful for students’ academic achievement and motive arousing. However, reviewing the relevant references, the author found that most of them did experimental studies or the application studies on the effects of CL. A few of those studies focuson the efficiency of CL in current English classroomin high schools. Classroom efficiency, refers to the effect of instruction in per unit time. It concerns many factors, including the achievement of teaching objectives, organization of activities, as well as students’ engagement and so on, which emphasizes mostly on the process of application. Therefore, the author intends to improve the application value of CL through the research of the efficiency of CL in the high schools.The study intends to provide answers to the two research questions:(1) What is the degree of the efficiency of CL in high school English classroom?(2) What are the factors that influence the efficiency of CL classes? In order to observe the efficiency of CL in English classroom, class observation and interview are applied. Class observation is applied for one semester and the author observed the classroom efficiency of CL through several dimensions. In addition, 6 teachers and 6 students from 3 senior high schools are interviewed, and the conversations are recorded with their permission. From the results of the research, the author found that the efficiency of CL in the high schools is not high. There are indeed some factors that influence classroom efficiency of CL, including the objective of CL application, the grouping of CL application, students’ participation, teacher’s role in CL activities, evaluation of CL practice, etc. Therefore the author explored theefficiency of CL in high school English classroom from the five main aspects and analyzed possible reasons, then put forward some suggestions for effective implementation of CL in English classes in the high schools.