Cooperative Learning And Senior English Writing Teaching

At the present time in English teaching in middle schools of China,there exist such phenomena as "Teachers explain too much while studentspractice little" and "Teachers waste much time but the effect is slow."Also the single teaching form fetters the whole development of middleschool students' English activities and restricts the improvement ofstudents' English usage abilities. English writing is an important means ofcommunication. During teaching writing, teachers mainly lay emphasison writing results and ignore writing process. What's more, the singleteaching form lacks interpersonal communication, so most students loseinterest in English writing .The new English Curriculum Standardsrequires that teaching should be focused on students and students'development. Moreover, it requires that English teaching lay stress onsubjective position in studying process, on students' sensibility and onstudents' lifelong study abilities. Under such circumstances, Englishwriting teaching needs to introduce a new learning mode-cooperativelearning, which faces all students and promotes the whole development ofstudents' language activities.According to the current state of Senior English writing teaching, thisthesis seeks to carry out cooperative learning in English teaching, whichmakes up for the shortcomings of English classroom teaching,strengthens the teacher-student and student-student communication inEnglish teaching process, promotes the diversity of English teaching,exerts affectional functions of English classroom teaching and acceleratesthe students who are good and poor at English to make progressaltogether. At the same time, carrying out cooperative learning in Englishcan help transfer the examination-oriented education into quality-orientededucation, change traditional teacher-student relationship into a newmode, cultivate students' cooperative awareness, competitive awareness,collective spirit and students' abilities to make innovations and obtaininformation through various channels. Therefore, I carry out a furthercooperative research about cooperative learning in English writingteaching, which is important to rectify cognition, deepen educationreform and promote quality-oriented education completely.This thesis deals with some theories about cooperative leaning andhow to apply it to English writing teaching. A contrastive research aboutEnglish writing teaching is done between two classes of Senior GradeThree. The period of the research is 20 weeks, aiming at providingreference to English teaching in middle schools to carry out cooperativelearning. This thesis is divided into five chapters.The thesis begins with the importance of cooperative learning.Chapter one covers the importance of English writing, mainly including threeaspects: why we must teach writing, the functions of writing and the writingrequirements of current English curriculum standards and so on. After that, thischapter puts forward the problems using a questionnaire: teachers only pay attentionto the writing results and ignore the process of writing and the consciousness ofreaders. According to this, the author puts forward the significance and purpose of thestudy.Chapter two discusses the history of cooperative learning and the currentresearch state.Chapter three mainly deals with the theoretical foundations, the basic elements ,major models of cooperative learning and cooperative learning in English writing.Chapter four mainly validates the effectiveness of using cooperative learning toimprove Students' English writing .A pretest, a mid-test and a posttest are performedin experimental class and control class respectively. The research shows that duringthe posttest the students in the experimental class get higher marks than those of thecontrol class.Chapter five is results and implications. The results suggest that during Englishwriting teaching, cooperative learning can create a matey and united classroomambience, arouse students' interest in learning, manoeuvre students' enthusiasm, makethe students share experience and improve writing scores together. At the same time,we should pay attention to the roles of teachers, the communication and feedbackamong groupmates. At last, this chapter involves the limitations of the research andthe recommendations for future research.A conclusion is drawn from the research. Cooperative learning can have greatereffects on raising the students' English writing scores in Senior English writingteaching.