Cooperative English Teaching And Its Implications For College English Teaching

With the development of science and economy in China, more attention is being paid to the field of language pedagogy. The reform of English teaching is taking place throughout China. The syllabus has been revised, testing systems have been adjusted, English textbooks have been replaced. The aim of English teaching is directed to communicative competence of English in everyday transactions. Focusing on the low oral proficiency of Chinese language learners, the author makes a reference to the literature of language pedagogy and conducts a survey about the real happenings in English classrooms in my university. At the same time, the Cooperative English Teaching is being practiced in Changchun University of Technology.To be exact, the cooperative approach is an offshoot of the contemporary Communicative Language Teaching. It is based on the latest development of linguistics and education psychology. The sociolinguistics views language as a vehicle for the realization of interpersonal relations and for the performance of social transactions between individuals. Social constructivism provides a view of learning as arising from interactions with others and identifies four key sets of factors which influence the learning process--- teachers, learners, tasks and contexts. None of these factors exist in isolation. They all interact as part of a dynamic, ongoing process. As a new language pedagogy, the cooperative English Teaching also takes in the merits of others such as The Grammar-Translation Method, The Audiolingual Method, Community Language Learning, Communicative Language Teaching, Task-based Learning, etc.Learners'feedback indicates that the Cooperative English Teaching succeeds in enhancing Chinese learners'oral proficiency by stimulating learners'intrinsic motivation, training their learning styles and developing autonomy. It suits the big Chinese classrooms better and should be further studied and developed.