A Study Of English Learning In Diverse Minority Cultural Backgrounds Through Cooperative Learning

Vocational school teachers of TEFL tend to complain that students in these schools are too passive in their learning, and that they seldom perform actively in class or in doing the homework assigned. The students show no interest in English learning and often get low scores in examinations. It is almost the same case in the school the writer teaches. In Simao Agricultural School, there are many minority students from the poor regions in Yunnan Province, where the educational level is still low. Besides, they have interference from both Chinese and their mother tongue when they learn English, for English is the third language they have to learn. Another serious issue in their learning is that when they are enrolled to receive further education, they have to leave their hometown and to live and study in a new community. They need to overcome the barriers in their intercultural communication, so that they can accommodate in the given culture and speech community. It is believed that among the speakers of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, contextual misunderstandings are more common than among the speakers of the same language. The internationalization and globalization of the world sets specific requirements on vocational education including the integrated foreign language education, the overall goal of which should be intercultural competence. Group cooperative learning is a powerful way which has been verified by many researchers and teachers home and abroad, in classrooms from preschool to tertiary education. At present there are about ten research bases of cooperative learning in our country, and many successful research results have been reported. This study aims at exploring cooperative learning's feasibility, operating form and the result of practice when it is used in the situation of a vocational school with large numbers of minority students. Part of the contents of Unified English Textbook One for vocational schools was chosen as teaching materials for cooperative learning. An experiment was implemented in a teaching class for a term, from September 2004 to December 2004. The students of the experiment class were divided into seven heterogeneous groups based on their age, sex, nationality, and English achievement in SMSEE(the Senior Middle School Entrance Examination). During the process of the teaching experiment, many forms of cooperative learning approaches were adopted. The comparative class was from the same grade with the same level adopting the traditional teaching method. The experiment result shows that the cooperative learning strategies have not only improved students' participation in class activities, but also promoted their interests in English learning. The organizing form of group-work is helpful in building harmonious relationship among students so as to improve teaching and learning environment. At the same time, it does a great deal in improving the whole achievement of English. Above all, the cooperative spirit and social skills which have been learned by the students through interpersonal communication of cooperative learning activities are vital to establish their good personality and comprehensive quality.