Research On The Application Of Cooperative Learning To College English Teaching

Currently, college English teaching is confronted with a great challenge and a new opportunity as well. To answer the call of China's social development for qualified personnel in the new era better, college English teaching is undergoing a further reform in order to improve its quality and cultivate more qualified talents. There is no doubt that activating students in college English classrooms is more crucial than ever. Under such circumstances, CL, as a set of successful instructional strategies, with its considerable advantages ranging from motivating students'learning interests and interaction to improving their language competence and skills, is right in accord with the College English Curriculum Requirements, and is undoubtedly a most beneficial attempt. This thesis discusses the theoretical background, basic elements and major approaches of CL. Through experiment, it explores the actual effects of employing CL in college English learning and teaching in the context of China where English is treated as a foreign language, finds out some possible problems in the implementation and proposes some effective and practical strategies to ensure the success and enhance the effectiveness of CL in college English classrooms.To collect effective data and ensure the validity of the result, this research makes a combination of qualitative research and quantitive research. It goes with an experiment of four months and a range of instruments such as tests, questionnaires, interviews and classroom observation are involved as well. The result of the experiment and the data collected in the research show that CL does hold its academic advantages in the college English classroom, and that the presupposed psychological and social effects of CL are also true in the college English classroom. Besides the vast benefits, this thesis also discovers some problems which may probably occur and negatively influence or sometimes even ruin CL. To tackle them and ensure the success of CL in college English classrooms, some practical strategies are proposed at the end of the thesis.