Using A Material-Driven Approach To Cooperative Learning To Improve The English Writing Of Senior High School Students

Cooperative learning is a creative and effective teaching approach that emerged in the United States in the early 1970 s and made substantial progress from the mid-1970 s to the mid-1980 s.Since the 1990 s,many English teachers have tried to apply cooperative learning to the teaching of English writing with no obvious effect.Therefore,based on the input hypothesis theory,this research attempts to incorporate materials collection,selection and experience into cooperative learning,which is called a material-driven approach,and applies it to senior high school teaching of English writing to improve students’ writing performance by increasing their participation and enthusiasm in group cooperation.In this study,101 students were involved from two parallel classes in Grade 2 of a senior high school in Qufu as an experimental group and a control group to conduct one-semester teaching experiment.The author applied a material-driven approach to cooperative learning to teach writing with students in experimental group and applied cooperative learning to teach writing with students in control group to explore the impacts of a material-driven approach to cooperative learning on senior high school students’ writing attitudes and writing performance.Before the experiment,questionnaire and test on the writing situation of the students both groups were conducted.After the experiment,the results of the questionnaire and writing scores of the students in the two groups were analyzed and compared respectively.To ensure the validity of the experimental results,the author selected 2 students from each of the following groups: those scored 0 to 10,11 to 20,21 to 25 respectively in the experimental group for interviews to understand the acceptance and viewpoint of applying a material-driven approach to cooperative learning by students of different English proficiency level.By comparing the results of pre-test and post-test,students’ writing performance in the experimental group has improved,whilst students’ writing performance in the control group has not changed significantly.By analysing the questionnaire and interview data,students’ attitudes towards English writing in the experimental group have changed significantly.This indicates that the material-driven approach to cooperative learning is conducive to stimulating students’ interest in writing which in turn helps to cultivate students’ better writing habits.Therefore,a material-driven approach to cooperative learning is suitable for senior high school teaching of English writing to some extent.This research combines a material-driven approach to cooperative learning with teaching English writing,which can not only enrich the existing empirical research of cooperative learning in our country.But also provide implications for teaching English writing in senior high schools.