A Study On The Application Of Cooperative Learning To “Task” Section Of Junior High School English Of Yilin Edition

With the promulgation and implementation of the New Curriculum, the request for English teaching is getting higher and higher. Writing teaching is the basis and an important part of English teaching. However, the current writing teaching is not optimistic. Usually in English writing teaching, students write, their teachers correct,and such mode plays a very important role in writing teaching. Based on this, the revision of the Junior High School English of Yilin edition appeared in 2012. “Task”section are specially set in each unit in order to solve the current writing situation. This section leads students to clear up the way of thinking, organize and use the vocabulary and sentence patterns in this unit and finally write beautiful articles. There are lots of studies on applying cooperative learning to writing, but the study on applying cooperative learning to “Task” section is little. Thus, this thesis tries to apply cooperative learning to “Task” section. By doing the experiment, the author attempts to study the procedures and the effectiveness of the teaching mode in order to provide some opinions and suggestions for “Task” section teaching of Junior High School English.The key questions to be solved in this paper are as follows:1. How to apply cooperative learning to the “Task” section of Junior High School English of Yilin edition?2. Is it effective to apply cooperative learning to the “Task” section of Junior High School English of Yilin edition?3. What problems still exist while applying the cooperative learning to the “Task”section of Junior High School English?The empirical study lasted for about five months. The author carried out the experiment from September 2015 to January 2016 in Xinxing Middle School of Tongshan District. The 100 students in Class 2 and Class 3, Grade 7 are the subjects of the experiment. Class 2 is the experimental class, which is used the cooperative leaning method, while Class 3 is the control class, which is used the traditional teaching method.The author has adopted these methods of tests, questionnaires, and interviews to study the changes of the learning effect of “Task” section before and after the experiment.Before the experiment, all the students were tested and asked to finish the questionnaire.These students were tested again after the experiment and the results of the tests and questionnaires were analyzed further. During the experiment, there were 35 students in the experimental class were interviewed at irregular intervals. Through the interviews with these students, the author intended to know the effects and problems of the application of cooperative learning in “Task” section which are conducive for the teacher to adjust and improve.According to the classroom practice and the analysis of tests, questionnaires and interviews, the conclusions are drawn as follows:1.Through the theoretical study and classroom practice, the author summarized the teaching procedures in the teaching of “Task” section. There are seven stages in all.They are shown as follows: divide the groups and make the topic accurate;discuss to answer and familiar with the essay; discuss in groups and make association;independent writing and draft; demo sample essay and discuss with teachers; group peer assessment and revise; the teacher's evaluation and show the products. Every stage is indispensable, and they are all linked with another.2.By the comparison in the experimental class, the mean score of the post-test is 2points higher than that of the pre-test, the pass rate increases by 5.98% and the excellent rate increases by 10.31%. Besides, the mean score of the writing part in the post-test of the experimental class is 16.78, which is 2.02 points higher than that of the control class.These all obviously prove that cooperative learning is helpful to improve students' writing test score. Through summarizing the interviews during the experiment, the author found out the improvement and progress of students' learning motivation,learning interest, classroom performance, participation. It is easy to see that the application of cooperative learning to “Task” section stimulates students' learning interest and motivation.3.Through careful observation in the process of the teaching practice and the interview records, I also found several problems. Some students are not clear how to complete the tasks effectively, which leads to a problem that the efficiency of the group cooperation is very low. Some excellent students only pay attention to their own scores and neglect to help other students who have difficulties. Besides, some poor students have bad learning habits and they can't participate the activities actively. These problems are still to be resolved.To sum up, this empirical research has achieved some results. But this research was carried out under limited conditions which included the limitation of experimental period and the influence of the experimenter's academic level and objective factors. So,there is a need for further study on the shortcomings of the experiment. Expecting the results of this study can provide some theoretical and practical guidance for the teaching of “Task” section.