An Empirical Research Of Cooperative Learning In Large English Classes Of Hebei City College

College English is very important basic course of high education in China. The problemof teaching non-English majors effectively always confuse college English teachers, and howto teaching effectively received widely concern.In the College English Curriculum Requirements, it writes:“The new model shouldcombine the principles of practicality, knowledge and interest, facilitate mobilizing theinitiative of both teachers and students, and attach particular importance to the centralposition of students and the leading role of teachers in the teaching and learning process.” Italso says:“Changes in the teaching model not only call for changes in teaching methods andapproaches, but also, more important, consist of changes in teaching philosophy and practice,and in a shift from a teacher-centered pattern, in which knowledge of the language and skillsare imparted by the teacher in class only, to a student-centered pattern, in which the abilitytouse the language and the ability to learn independently are cultivated in addition tolanguage knowledge and skills, also to lifelong education, geared towards cultivatingstudents’ lifelong learning ability.”However, with the enrollment expansion in China’s colleges, the problem of inadequatefacilities and insufficient teaching resources are getting more and more serious, which leadsto such a larger class-size as “two-in-one”,“three-in-one”. The “teacher-centered” teachingpattern meets up with the severe challenge. The teaching reform is undergoing everywhere.As the new private university in Hebei province in2014, Hebei City College combinesmall-size listening class with large-size reading class together under the integratedenvironment, which is, holding big without giving up small, and have got a big progress. Butas a young college teacher, the author feels that the teaching effects in the large class are stillunsatisfactory compared with the colorful and active small class. After two years’ experience,the author finds that cooperative learning is an effective teaching strategy and is worth toresearch.This research attempts to investigate the effectiveness of cooperative learning forstudents’ achievements; to coordinate the differing needs of the students, to examine thestudents’ attitudes towards cooperative learning and the main factors affecting its implementation and especially to verify that cooperative learning is the effective teachingmodel and evaluation model in a large class.The experiment involves two classes: experimental class, which applies the cooperativelearning approach and control class, which uses the traditional approach. During the16weeks, the author conducted her study by explaining the concept and methods of cooperativelearning, dividing study group, assigning task, making group rules and establishingevaluation standard in the experimental class. Then, with the help of SPSS19.0, by analyzingthe scores obtained in the pre-test and post-test, the author finds out that cooperative learningpromotes language proficiency and achievement in final exam; by analyzing the feedbackfrom the questionnaire, class observation and interview, the author concludes that cooperativelearning is accepted and welcome by most of the students.Thus it can be seen, it is concluded that cooperative learning is an effective teachingapproach in a large class under the integrated teaching environment. It can provide morechances to student-teacher’s interaction, stick out the students’ position, cultivate theirawareness of participating in the activities actively and motivate their interests in learningEnglish, so that it will reach the aim of improving the teaching effects and students’comprehensive ability touse English in a well-rounded way. The result would also benefit theteachers in and out of the universities.In the end, the limitations of the study and some suggestions to the future study arementioned.