The Experimental Research On Jigsaw Into College English Teaching In Large Classes

More admission of students into colleges challenges college English teaching to a great extent. The number of one class changes into 40-80 from 20 or so before. Such a number makes the class managing more difficult in that many class activities appropriate for small classes are not feasible for large classes and the mutual activities between teachers and students or among students decrease due to limitations of time and student's number. Therefore, at present the first thing to do is to improve the English teaching approaches and the students' practical ability of English.This essay begins with the present situation of college English teaching and problems concerning it, analyses the essence of college English teaching within large classes through its approaches and teachers' and students' attitudes to it, and concludes that the key lies in strengthening class's mutual activities by applying cooperative learning. The writer argues that the cooperative learning theory and approach: Jigsaw meets the requirements and features of English learning and is one of the solutions of tackling with English teaching within large classes.Meanwhile the writer conducts an almost experiment lasting for 15 weeks. The experiment studies 85 four-year non-English major college students (2006) from Shandong Jiao tong University. These students use the newly-adopted textbook {New Horizon College English)) and corresponding ((listening and speaking textbook)). The aim of the experiment is to test and prove feasibility of the cooperative learning method: Jigsaw within large classes and to summarize a set of English teaching and managing methods for large classes. The test before experiment shows that there is no obvious difference in comprehensive language ability between experimenting and comtrasting classes. All kinds of variability have been controlled well during the test. The experimenting class mainly applies the cooperative learning method: Jigsaw. The statistics derived from the experiment are analyzed by T test, which shows that the experimenting class's reading and speaking ability is improved obviously.Chapter 1: Making a review over our country's college English teaching at present, state some problems and defects, and introduce the background of the rise of cooperative learning and research of cooperative learning both domestic and abroad including the definition of cooperative learning, the type, approach and theoretic basis of it, plus involved language teaching theory; state the purpose and consequence of this research and mainly focus on the application of jigsaw cooperative learning method into college English teaching in large classes. Chapter 2: Elaborating on the content of jigsaw, its history and keys of its application into language teaching. Through comparing traditional language teaching and language teaching by jigsaw and according to the result of application of jigsaw into language teaching practice, I think jigsaw language teaching approach is feasible for college English teaching in large classes. Chapter 3: Focusing on the application of jigsaw into college English teaching in large classes, study the English teaching of non-English major classes: Finance 065and 064(both in Shandong Jiao tong University).The procedure of the research is delicately planned and lasted for 15 weeks during which we made an all-sides comparison between jigsaw class and non-jigsaw class through testing, questionnaire, personal interview and many ways kinds of that.Chapter 4: Analyzing the feedback of questionnaire and statistics of result of testing, we find that there is a noticeable progress in reading, writing and speaking ability for jigsaw class.Chapter5: I state the difficulties, achievement and importance of application of jigsaw into college English teaching in large classes, especially elaborating on the future research and prospect of application of jigsaw into college English teaching in large classes. I hope my work will be helpful in research into application of Cooperative Learning into college English teaching.