The Comprehensive Application Of Cooperative Learning In College English Teaching

Cooperative Learning became popular in the late 1970s in America and now it has been widely used by western educators in the teaching of many subjects. Cooperative Learning has been so successful in the West that it is considered to be one of the greatest teaching reforms by the famous American educators Ellis A.K. and Fouts J.T. (Jin Yule, 2005).College English teaching in China is facing a serious challenge. The"time-consuming and inefficient"problem of College English teaching has caused wide concern in society. The traditional teaching approaches are often criticized for not being able to improve the students'overall competence of language use efficiently. China is making more and more interactions with the outside world, so it is essential for college students to improve their English competence. Exploring an efficient teaching approach is becoming increasingly urgent after the establishment of College English Curriculum Requirements in 2007. Cooperative Learning has gained its recognition in China, but its application in College English teaching is still in its infancy. As a College English teacher, the author of the thesis tentatively conducted an experimental study to testify the effect of the comprehensive application of Cooperative Learning in College English teaching.The author conducted an experimental study by using contrastive analysis. The research goals of the study are: (1) To expect to prove that Cooperative Learning can increase the non-English majors'inner motivation and classroom involvement, and reduce their English learning anxiety. (2) To expect to prove that Cooperative Learning can improve the non-English majors'academic achievement. The subjects of the study are 88 students of science enrolled in 2008 at Shandong University of Technology. The author of the thesis taught them both the listening and speaking course and the reading and writing course. Before the experiment, the two classes both took a pretest. The test paper was the English test paper for college entrance examination administrated in spring, 2008, in Shanghai. After collecting the data of the pretest, the author analyzed the data by using SPSS13.0. An independent samples t-test showed that there was no significant difference between the two classes in terms of English proficiency. Then the author randomly chose one class as the experimental class and the other became the control class. The author conducted the sixteen-week experimental study from September, 2008. The subjects in the experimental class answered a questionnaire before the experiment and answered another after the experiment. The reliability coefficients for the two questionnaires are both higher than .700. The author also interviewed some subjects regularly in the course of the experiment. By analyzing the data of the two questionnaires and the interviews, the author found that the students in the experimental class had some positive changes in affective factors and other aspects. They became more interested and more motivated in learning English and had less foreign language learning anxiety. They also showed improvements in their social skills. A posttest was administrated to the students both in the experimental class and the control class at the end of the experiment. The test paper for the posttest was a PETS-3 test paper (March, 2005) and the author made some necessary adjustments. An independent samples t-test revealed a significant difference between the experimental class and the control class in general grade. And in the sections of speaking, listening, reading and writing, there are also significant differences while there was no significant difference between the two classes in the section of vocabulary and structure.Some of the problems with Cooperative Learning in College English teaching are also identified in the experiment, but on the whole, the study proved that Cooperative Learning is a good choice for College English teaching and it can be implemented in College English teaching comprehensively. If a College English teacher understands it well and tries to make proper adjustments when implementing it, Cooperative Learning will serve as an efficient teaching approach which can greatly facilitate College English teaching.