An Experimental Study On STAD To The Teaching Of English Vocabulary For Senior Two

In the early 19th century,the concept of Cooperative Learning was introduced into the United States.As an effective learning strategy,cooperative teaching method was developed in the early 1970s and was widely used in the classroom.It has a positive effect in improving the atmosphere of the class,improving students’academic achievements in a large scale,and promoting the development of students’non-cognitive quality.In our country,the theory of Cooperative Learning began to spread in the 1980s.STAD（Student Teams-Achievement Divisions）has been considered as an important Cooperative Learning Strategy in progressive pedagogy,which requires students to work together in a diverse group and then compete with equal groups,then students are eventually recognized on the basis of their progress scores.STAD has been applied to classroom teaching in elementary education in China since the early 20^thcentury.A number of studies have supported the use of STAD in different subjects and social-cultural contexts.Unsatisfactorily,most of the classroom teaching mechanically imitates models from aboard,which was not exactly appropriate for Chinese teaching contexts.Therefore,there is an urgent demand that local Cooperative Learning mode be developed to fit in with the current situation of foreign language teaching in our country.This study attempts to explore how the application of STAD to English vocabulary teaching influences students’vocabulary application ability on the basis of Cooperative Theory,Social Interdependence Theory and Motivational Theory.In this thesis,the following two questions were explored:1.What effect does STAD have on senior two students’competence of applying vocabulary?2.What effect does STAD have on senior two students’attitudes towards vocabulary learning?Quantitative method is employed in this study,involving teaching experiments and a questionnaire survey.The research subjects are from two parallel classes of Grade 2 in a high school in Yining County of Yili Kazak Prefecture,Xinjiang.Class 8 is selected as experimental class（hereafter EC）and class 9 is control class（hereafter CC）.A vocabulary test was prepared and administered by the researcher before the experiment as a pre-test.During the teaching experiment,EC was taught with Student Teams-Achievement Divisions（STAD）strategy whereas CC was taught with conventional PPT model.The treatment was carried out for twelve weeks.At the end of the experiment,another vocabulary test was administered as a post-test to examine students’acquisition of the target vocabulary.The scores of the tests were analyzed by SPSS 25.0.Independent Samples t-test and Paired Samples t-test were used to analyze the data.Results showed that there was a significant difference between EC and CC in the test achievements,which favors EC（p=0.042<0.05）.Afterwards,a questionnaire was carried out in EC to explore the effects of STAD on students’attitudes towards vocabulary learning.Analysis of the questionnaire showed that students held positive attitudes towards vocabulary learning after the application of STAD.Thus the conclusion could be drawn:1)STAD is effective in improving senior two students’competence of applying vocabulary.（p=0.042<0.05）2)STAD is effective in improving senior two students’attitudes towards vocabulary learning.In conclusion,the results indicate that STAD Cooperative Learning is more conductive than the conventional type of teaching in vocabulary class.The results analysis of the questionnaire further verifies that STAD has positive effects on students’attitudes towards vocabulary learning by reducing students’pressure,providing opportunities to communicate and creating harmonious study atmosphere.Therefore,it is of great significance to carry out STAD in senior high school English vocabulary teaching.