Cooperative Learning Approach: An Effective Approach To Improve Oral English Teaching In Universities

It is known to all that English is the most popular language in the world. As the developmentof the globalization, it becomes more and more important and useful for the communication allover the world. Our country has paid great attention to the education of this language, however,most students still can not speak out freely though they can get high marks in the written exams.Many students especially those in the universities often complain that they can not talk withforeigners naturally although they have learned enough words, phrases and sentences. English,which has turned to be a way to get a certificate instead of a tool to communicate, has lost itsoriginal function. According to the observation in the language teaching, students haveexperienced a transformation from "passionate" to "indifferent" in oral English learning. At thebeginning, they are quite interested in oral practice, as time goes by, they gradually decrease theirinterests and seldom speak out in or out of class. Based on some investigation, it has been foundthat the main reason for this transformation is that the students don't have enough time topractice in class and lack the real communicative atmosphere in their learning process. Thatmeans the present teaching methods and learning atmosphere have become the blocks for theimprovement of the oral English competence. In order to solve the problem, the teachers need tofind a new teaching method to arouse students' enthusiasm to speak out. Through abundantresearch, the Cooperative Learning Approach is found to be more suitable to improve the oralEnglish competence than any other approach. The Cooperative Learning Approach has beencarried out in lots of countries and also been used in various fields. Many professors and teachershave regarded this approach as one of the most useful and effective teaching approach in history.Simply speaking, it is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together toachieve shared goals. Students have to talk to each other to finish their tasks, which wouldunconsciously increase the time to talk with others. Working in groups can also establish the freeatmosphere of communication. According to the above features, it seems that the CooperativeLearning Approach can easily solve the problems mentioned in the oral English teaching area.However, the application of the cooperative learning approach is not so popular in universities.Most of the teachers and students are rather hazy about the details of this approach. Therefore,the thesis aims to arise the teachers and students' interests and tries to push the application of thecooperative learning approach in the universities. Based on the theoretical research andexperiments, the thesis proves that the cooperative learning method is really practical and usefulto develop the oral English ability of the university students.This thesis is divided into four chapters and deals with the following problems respectively.Chapter one discusses the background of choosing this topic. As the English teaching in ourcountry has entered into a new stage, it seems that all the teachers and students have realized theimportance of the oral English teaching. However, it is still rather difficult to find out someone inthe universities who can communicate freely with the foreigners. The author doubted if theteacher had paid enough attention to the oral English teaching. In order to get more detailedinformation, the author had done abundant research among 30 English teachers and 100 studentswho are non-English majors in three universities. According to the observation and investigation,the problems that obstruct the advancement of oral ability in the universities have been found. Inbrief, time and opportunity have become the key point to the improvement of the oral Englishability. Therefore, the teachers need to apply a more suitable teaching approach to solve thedifficult problems. Based on the research of the English teaching approach, the CooperativeLearning approach is found to be more suitable than others. The second part of this chapter is abrief introduction to the Cooperative Learning Approach, which gives us a general idea aboutthis method. In the end, the author proposes the hypothesis which may be regarded as thesuspense for readers. In the following chapters, the hypothesis will be approved throughtheoretical analysis and practical experiments.Chapter two describes the Cooperative Learning Approach in detail. Through theinvestigation, it can be easily seen that both the teaching staff and the students have very blurryidea about this approach. Most of them regard it as the pure group work. In fact, the CooperativeLearning Approach has strong theoretical foundation and various practical methods besides thegroup work. This chapter also recommends the detailed information. Firstly, it distinguishes thedifference between the Group Learning and the Cooperative Learning Approach. Secondly, itintroduces the basic theory and the five crucial elements of this approach, that is, positiveinterdependence, individual accountability, group processing, social skill and face-to-faceinteraction. Thirdly, the chapter shows some experiments concerning the "true" CooperativeLearning, which has been done by some famous professors. Fourthly, the modern methods of theCooperative Learning Approach are mentioned, including Learning Together, GroupInvestigation, Jigsaw Methods and so on.Chapter three aims to prove the hypothesis that the Cooperative Learning Approach canimprove the students' oral English ability on the theoretical respect. Some important and usefultheories about the oral ability are presented in this chapter. Communicative competence is nowconsidered to be the most important element for the improvement of the oral ability. To acquirethe communicative competence, the students should firstly comprehend the three stages of theoral English ability development, i.e. declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, internalknowledge. Among the three stages, practice plays an important role to make the proceduralknowledge into the internal knowledge. Therefore, the students need to practice a lot to improvetheir oral ability. Besides the three stages, this chapter analyzes three factors that affect oralEnglish competence development. In the following part of this chapter, the author does sometheoretical analysis to prove that the Cooperative Learning Approach can improve the students'oral English ability.Chapter four is the experimental aspect to validate the idea. The practical application is themost convictive method to substantiate the supposition. Therefore, the author did a three-monthexperiment and finally got some data to explain the results and some other problems. In thischapter, the research design and the produce of the experiment are explained in detail. Somespecial cards are showed to demonstrate the practical usage of this teaching method. Through theexperiment, it can be seen that the Cooperative Learning Approach indeed can improve thestudents' oral English competence in a certain level. What's more, the author put forward someother problems and further consideration in the end.