The Effectiveness Of Collaborative Learning In EFL Large Class Teaching

The increasing enrollment from 1999 in China pushed EFL teaching confront with new challenges: the inexorable trend of large-class English teaching in many universities. However, the difficulty of managing a super-size class is widely acknowledged. Therefore the traditional teacher-centered teaching method naturally becomes the choice of many teachers, and Collaborative Learning, preferred by many experts in small classes was rejected in large class teaching.On analyzing the problems existed in large class, the attitudes of teachers and students in large class, this paper proposed that the essence and key to the solution of the problem of EFL large class teaching lie in adding active learning and classroom dynamics to large class, strengthening personalizing to teaching.This paper shed new light on large class English teaching by implementing Collaborative learning (CL) in large class in order to further prove the effectiveness of CL approach in large size EFL class. From heterogeneous group formation, to leader selection to various CL structural approaches, the researcher has made detailed and careful design, aiming at building up a set of CL large class management approaches to make it effective. With the research, the researcher also tried to find out factors affecting the implementation of CL in large class.Under the quantitative analysis of the statistics, the findings indicate that students have improved a lot in their English study with CL, especially in listening, speaking, and writing. The result also further proves that the heterogeneous groups, group dynamics, positive interdependence and all what CL emphasizes have stimulated the learners' learning interests, motivation and their natural awareness of language learning, which have improved their learning strategies and cognitive awareness in the meantime.