The Application Of Cooperative Learning To The Teaching Of Writing In Five-year Normal Schools

Under the guidance of traditional English teaching methodology, there are more chances for the students to negatively receive the knowledge than for them to utilize their knowledge for communication. The teaching of writing, the major link related to language output, is especially the weakest part of teaching. Starting with an introduction of the basic theories and conceptions of collaborative learning, this thesis attempts to put the theory of cooperative learning into the practice of the teaching of English writing. Through the cooperative writing and coauthor's feedbacks in collaborative writing, the students can learn to discern the contents and formation of their compositions and to comment and revise them, so that their total output will surmount the sum of their individual outputs and their writing ability can thus be improved.Through the analysis of the status quo of the five-year normal school students and the problems that exist in the present teaching of writing in the school, this thesis explores a teaching organizational formation adjusted to the features of the teaching in the school and the characteristics of the students. The specific utilizing policies of cooperative learning in the English writing class are also explored to test the availability of collaborative learning and to provide some practical experience for the reformation of writing. The thesis also explores the basic conclusion raised by the author that cooperative learning can improve the psychological atmosphere of the classes, greatly and generally improve the scores of the students, and improve their communicative and cooperative abilities.Eighty freshman students from two natural parallel classes in Yishui Normal School are chosen for the experiment ( 40 students from each class). One is an Experimental Class while the other is a Control Class. The teaching experiment which lasts four months is the core of this study. The two classes receive writing instruction under two conditions: one is taught by the traditional method, while the other by cooperative method. In the traditional setting, students as usual write their own compositions and hand them in to the teachers. Students in experimental group are organized in cooperative writing settings. In the study, two tests (pre-test and post-test on writing) are employed to analyze the experiment better, and the data of both tests are collected and analyzed by SPSS10.0. In the meanwhile, questionnaire is explored to investigate students'attitudes towards writing before and after experiment. The result s show :Firstly, cooperative learning can reduce students'feelings of pressure and anxiety in writing and the result of questionnaire shows that English classroom atmosphere in the experimental class has been greatly improved and the students'interest in writing has also been promoted through the application of cooperative learning.Secondly, cooperative group writing not only helps students enhance their writing academic achievement but improve their abilities to cooperate with each other.So the outcome of the study proves that the application of cooperative learning to writing in five-year normal schools is feasible and the author sincerely hopes that this study can shed light on the cultivation of writing competence of normal school students so as to foster more qualified and excellent teachers for society.