The Application Of Cooperative Learning Into English Teaching In Vocational And Technical College

English teaching and learning in vocational and technical college has made great progress in recent years. But we should also realize that the development of our current English teaching can't meet the demand of the economical and social development, such as we pay too much attention to the teaching of knowledge about language and neglect the training of language skill etc. In vocational and technical college, most language classrooms are teacher-centered. This approach, however, has serious drawbacks in practice so that students are thrown into a passive role and students lack opportunities of using and practicing the target language. Therefore students lose their confidence in learning. All these will lead to the students" reticence in the classroom. Although teachers have been making great efforts to practice students-centered approach, most students' English level is still at an unsatisfied stage.Thus the author introduces the cooperative learning into the English classroom in vocational and technical college.Cooperative learning, as a new teaching theory and model, is widely applied by many countries in the world. It mainly is a kind of successful teaching strategy and class technique that emphasizes the learner-centered class, in which teacher plays a role of organizer, instructor, monitor, participator and assessor, students are organized in groups of two or six students in order to use a variety of learning activities to fulfill a teaching task cooperatively. Each member of the group is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping groupmates to share the common achievement. Many researches have proved that it is a creative and effective teaching approach. Students at different levels can benefit a lot from it.This study is mainly based on both cognitive theory and SLA theory. The purpose is to find out whether cooperative learning can improve the overall atmosphere of the vocational college English classroom, whether cooperative learning can enhance the English proficiency of vocational and technical college students. Cooperative learning experiment was conducted from September 2004 to January 2005. The subjects are first-year non-English majors from two classes in Jiangxi Electric Vocational and Technical College. They are randomly selected by computers. The experimental group and the control group have respectively 32 students. The data are collected through language tests, questionnaires, interviews, and observation of class.