On The Effect Of Cooperative Learning In Large-class College English Teaching

With the increasing development of economy and more frequent communication between countries, English, as an international language, has more important position and plays a greater role. Accordingly, the requirements for English teaching and learning become higher. Although experts and scholars have been trying to reform the English teaching approaches, the result is not satisfactory. Especially, the recent increasing enrollment has challenged the college English teaching greatly. The increasing number of students and the lack of faculties lead to the larger number of students in English class. So how to improve the quality of large-class English teaching is the great concern of teachers and students, which is also the ultimate purpose of this research.It's evident that the traditional teacher-centered teaching approach cannot meet the demands of the development. At this moment, the popular cooperative learning approach has gained wide attention. Cooperative learning theories and methods have been researched deeply, and are adopted widely in many countries all over the world. The core of the cooperative learning is the group work. It emphasizes the student-centered, and the teacher as designer, instructor and monitor, etc.This research lasts sixteen weeks. By means of such instruments as questionnaires, tests, interviews and classroom observations, the research on the effect of cooperative learning on the large-class college English teaching is conducted. The result of the research shows that the cooperative learning theories and methods are suitable for the large-class English teaching, and helpful to improve the quality of the teaching. The cooperative learning's heterogeneous group, positive interdependence, individual accountability and group work, etc. make the classroom atmosphere relaxed and greatly improve students'positivity of participation and interest in learning. Students not only make great progress in academic performance but also in communication skills, self-confidence and self-esteem, etc.Through this research, some disadvantages of cooperative learning in large-class college English teaching are founded, such as, students'inadequate preparations for the group work, unequal opportunities and time for participation of group members, etc. On the basis of these findings in the research, some pedagogical implications are put forward to improve the effect of cooperative learning and the quality of large-class college English teaching.