Cooperative Learning In Oral English Teaching By Native Speaker For English Majors

The research on Cooperative Learning began in 1970s in America. Many researches have provedthat it has positive effects on class environment, student achievement as well as social affective aspects.Cooperative learning is based on students’individual factors, and the students work together inheterogeneous groups to help and encourage each other to learn and reach the common goals. Theirawards are evaluated by the general achievements of the whole group. The research on cooperativelearning had decades of history abroad, but in our country the systematic study and experiment ofcooperative learning began in the late of 1980s. Furthermore, the researches at home have beenfocusing on the application of cooperative learning in oral English teaching of the junior or seniorschool or non-English majors in the universities which is conducted by our native Chinese teachers, butlacking of the research in oral English teaching in English major, especially conducted by native Englishteachers. Therefore, this study put forwards that cooperative learning is applied in oral Englishteaching of native English teacher in English major from a new perspective.This study was conducted among 38 sophomore students taught by a native English teacher forEnglish majors at Datong University. In order to investigate the management and organization of theforeign teacher in oral English teaching, and to analyse the performance of the students and theirfeedback on cooperative learning, this study adopted quantitative and qualitative methods. The maininstruments are classroom observation and interview, and oral test grades are also analyzedquantitatively. Classroom observation was adopted to find out the design of the classroom activities,the ways of dividing groups, the time allot on the teaching activities and the performance of the studentin the class. While the interview with the students was designed to investigate the feedback of thestudents on cooperative learning and interview with foreign teacher was to learn about ways of themanagement and organization of the foreign teacher applied cooperative learning in the class and theevaluation of students in the cooperative class.The results of the study indicated that cooperative learning can cultivate students’cooperativespirits, improve students’learning enthusiasm and class atmosphere, promote their oral Englishachievement and their oral ability; The cooperative learning class gives the students enough time tocommunicate with each other, and the native English teacher use authentic English, which can provideauthentic situation to students to experience native English accents and idiomatic English in oral English learning. It attracts students’attention and enlarges their view, which can foster the students tobecome more enthusiastic in their English learning.