The Application Of Cooperative Learning Strategies In Middle School English Teaching

Currently, the new reform of basic education curriculum is being carried on. This new reform of basic education curriculum is incomparable and different from any previous reform in its broad scope, large strength and deep influence. The New English Curriculum Standards is the full embodiment of achievement of the reform, in which "the Student-Orientation" and "the advocation of the Learning Style of Experience, Practice, Participation and Cooperation and Exchanges" have been identified as the most basic teaching ideas. With these ideas, the classroom teaching is concerned with how teachers teach and how students study. It is put forward that the learning strategies and emotional factors are essential to successful learning.Cooperative learning, as one of the basic strategies, is getting more and more attention under the new educational circumstance. It takes the "Guidance and Participation" as the basic mode and emphasizes that the students should become the subject of studying in terms of the relationship between teachers and students, and they should physically participate in the classroom teaching activities and experience learning. Actually, cooperative learning is a kind of teaching form in which the students finish a specific amount of learning task in groups through interdependent and interactive activities. Its purpose is to promote the development of the students in cognition, emotion and attitude. The strategy of cooperative learning has been carried out for more than twenty years in China, but because most teachers are short of understanding and research of the modern theories and teaching spirit of inquiry contained in learning of classroom teaching organizational form, the cooperative learning is superficial and the inner relationship between cooperative learning group and developing students'subjectivity is not grasped, thus bringing the blindness and leading to the following aspects in actual operation:(1) Cooperative learning often leads to confused discipline in class with a large number of students. Most students are short of independent thinking process, and the participation is also unbalanced. Many teachers even think that cooperative learning is only suitable for small class teaching. (2) Group division is not reasonable. (3) Evaluation mechanism of cooperative learning is imperfect.Taking into consideration the defects of traditional English teaching and learning and the shortcomings of present cooperative learning, the author carries out an experimental research on the implementation of cooperative learning strategies in the middle school English teaching under the context of new idea of curriculum. The thesis puts forward that the cooperative mechanism in class with a large number of students can be well implemented and teaching in class with a large number of students needs more cooperation. The thesis also deals with the scientific principles in the division of the groups and the establishment of effective and reasonable evaluation mechanism in an effort to reflect the operability of the cooperative learning strategies under the new curriculum in middle school English teaching.This research is mainly divided into four parts. The first chapter, the introduction of the thesis, mainly discusses the purpose, significance and methods of this study. Chapter two is the literature review, discussing the definition of cooperative learning, the status of the study of cooperative learning at home and abroad, and its theoretical basis. The third chapter is an experimental study. In order to achieve the desired effect of experiment, the purposes, objects, time and methods of the experiments are clearly defined. It also gives a detailed introduction to the preparation and implementation of cooperative learning strategies, especially in terms of the main judgment ways of establishing cooperative learning groups and cooperative learning activities. The specific implementation of cooperative learning in middle school English teaching is shown by the division of three procedures:pre-class preparation, teaching in class and activities after class, which explains and expands the studying space of cooperation study from curricular to extracurricular. After experiments of a semester, the desired results have been achieved and the experimental results have been analyzed in a rational way. In chapter four, research conclusion and revelation are obtained on the basis of theoretical research and experimental demonstration. These conclusions and revelations reflect the maneuverability of cooperative learning strategies in middle school English teaching under the context of new idea of curriculum.In short, cooperative learning is students-oriented with study groups as the basic teaching organizational form, systematically using the interaction among dynamic factors to promote studying and achieving the goal of teaching. The mode of cooperative learning in English classroom teaching can fully mobilize students'learning enthusiasm, initiatives and creativity, and is also conducive to cultivate the students'sense of cooperation and teamwork skill, to improve their interpersonal skills and to strengthen their team spirit. Cooperative learning in middle school English teaching is a learning strategy worth popularizing.Although the author has tried her best to conduct a systematic research on this topic, its limitations are obvious. On the one hand, due to time constraints, analysis and discussion are only confined to the questionnaires and experimental tests. On the other hand, the participants are limited to those who are confined to the students taught by the researcher. Therefore, the experimental results are hard to be comprehensive. These deficiencies need to be further studied in the future.