The Application Of Cooperative Learning To The English Teaching Of High Vocational Technical College

Foreign language, a compulsory basic course in higher-vocational technique colleges, has its own practical and professional features for teaching. However, it has long been taught mainly with traditional Grammar Translation approach and the teaching is not as effective as expected. Currently it is hard to achieve the training goal as required for the higher-vocational college students.Since the 1970s, Cooperative Learning has become a pervasive educational approach in the United States. Nowadays, Cooperative Learning has been a theoretical and strategic system applied by many countries in the world. Many researches have proved that it is a creative and effective teaching approach. There has been a growing consensus among researchers about the positive effects of CL on student achievements as well as social affective aspects.To prove CL is effective in English teaching in Higher Vocational Technique College, the author conducted a research on CL in my English class in Jiangxi Institute of Education. The research aimed to explore two aspects of CL as below:1.its feasibility in English teaching in higher vocational technique college2.its effect on changing the learners'behavior, attitude, cooperative awareness and abilityThrough one term's action research, data collection and analysis, the researcher found that CL is feasible and effective when applied to English classes in JXIE : it can raise the learners'learning interest and improve their learning results, their cooperative awareness and ability are also improved.The structure of this thesis is like the following:Chapter one describes a general picture of this study, including the present English teaching situation in HVTC, the significance of this study and the structure of this thesis;Chapter two focuses on the literature review of CL. In this chapter the different teaching methods and approaches in history are introduced firstly then a brief history of CL is reviewed followed by the definitions of CL, and major models of CL and the possibility of applying CL in HVTC;Chapter three shows the theoretical bases for the studying, including constructivism, humanism, social interdependence theory and language acquisition theory.Chapter four focuses on the research methodology including the objective, the participants, the hypotheses, the instruments and the procedures.Chapter five presents in detail the results of data collection and analysis. Results from the analysis of two tests reveal that this new approach helps in facilitating the students in learning English and increasing their learning interest and confidence and cooperative skills.Chapter six summarizes the finding of the study. In addition, limitations of the present study and suggestions for further research are made.