Affective Value Of Cooperative Learning In Foreign Language Learning And Teaching

With the development of humanistic psychology, affective factors in language learning is gaining importance. The affective state would have great impact on learning activities and learning results. Therefore, language teaching experts and researchers began to investigate on how to implement affective development into language learning and teaching since 1970s. During this period, teaching methods like Suggestopedia, Silent Way, Community Language Learning emerged. They all aimed at taking into account the affective factors.Then how to motivate positive affects while eliminate the influence of negative ones? For the last thirty years, people began and gradually pay much attention to the study model based on groups and tasks. In this situation, cooperative learning emerged. The point of CL is that learners of different levels communicate, interact, and cooperate with each other to produce one product in oral, written or any other form.Many research results suggest that the application of cooperative learning in language study would lead to positive changes in affects. For example, it enhances individual responsibility, promotes learners'joint efforts and cooperation, foster the development of social skills needed to interact and communicate equitably with diverse groups of people. Besides all these, the most prominent influence lies in the aspect of affective factors in language learning. It would reduce anxiety, promote self-confidence and self-esteem, increase motivation and so on. But on the meantime, some people hold different opinions, they think cooperative learning is beneficial only for'good students,'or conversely, that it only helps'poor students', furthermore, some people conclude that cooperative leaning cannot obviously improve learning results.This paper will take an experiment on 97 freshmen of English majors of my college. By ways of observation, interview, questionnaire and on so, the writer want to analyze the effects of affective factors in language learning after conducting cooperative learning in the class and after-class teaching and learning. By doing this experiment, I found that CL used in foreign language learning and teaching can activate some positive affects in language learning. It also helps to develop capacity of social interaction. Though some problems emerged during the process of the experiment, I still think CL is a new teaching method worth the promotion in foreign language learning and teaching.