A Study Of Cooperative Learning In The Teaching Of English Writing In Senior Middle School

Cooperative learning promoted by Slavin, Johnson et al in the 1970s in America is a kind of pedagogical strategic system. Cooperative learning mainly is a kind of class techniques that encourage students to perform all kinds of learning activities in group or small team, emphasizes the learner-centered class, in which he teacher plays a role of director, cooperator, supervisor, attempts to enhance teacher-student and student-student interactions and promotes students to learn sufficiently, enables students to work cooperatively. In cooperative learning students help each other to study some materials and can be rewarded for the achievements or performance of the entire group. Rewarding the group for the achievements of every group members reduces the pressure on the students and enhances students' initiative to finish assignments. The study attempts to carry out an experiment on the teaching of English writing Senior 2 of Pingliang No. 1 Middle School, based on the predecessors' studies and according to the conditions of the students in Senior 2 of Pingliang No. 1 Middle School. The period of the study is a semester. The thesis is divided into seven chapters.Chapter One is Introduction. After introducing the importance of English writing, this chapter shows the problems that the teacher only pays attention to the writing results and ignores the process of writing and the consciousness of readers, whicli is the state of the teaching of English writing in China. The chapter also introduces the definitions, traits and advantages of the cooperative learning and the significance and purpose of the study.Chapter Two is Literature Review. This chapter states predecessor has studied "the writing process", advocating collaborative learning and encouraging students to help each other, to give peer feedback and write cooperatively in the whole writing process. This chapter also states the writing process is the process of cooperation and interaction. Writing isn't individual actions; a writer always keeps readers in his /her mind.Chapter Three is Research. Vygotsky's concept of ZPD and its related scaffolding metaphor serve as the main theoretical basis for the study of cooperative learning in English writing. The study tries to verify whether cooperative learning in English writing has any effects on raising students' scores. In the course of EC writing, cooperative learning is used and the steps are brainstorming, discussion, writing the first draft, peer editing, writing the second drafts, peer correcting, writing the final drafts, evaluations from peers and evaluations from the teacher. Pretest, mid-test and posttest are performed inEC and CC.Chapter Four is Statistical Analyses. The author uses SPSS 11.5 software package and the computer to do statistic and t test. The study finds that the posttest students' English writing scores of experimental class are significantly higher than those of the control class.Chapter Five is Results and Discussion. The results suggest the importance of the teacher's role of director, organizer and participator; in English writing, cooperative learning can create a friendly, unify atmosphere, so students can share the experience and raise the writing scores.Chapter Six is Conclusion. A conclusion is drawn from the study. Cooperative learning has effects on raising the students' English writing scores in the teaching of English writing.Chapter Seven is Limitations of the Study and Recommendations for Future Research. Had the time of the study been longer, the results would be much more persuasive. The experimental study is carried out in the key middle school in Gansu Province. If the study is performed in a non-key middle school, the conclusion has a stronger popularity. This is what the author wants to study further.