An Experimental Study Of Cooperative Learning In English Grammar Class In Senior High School

Grammar is regarded as a necessary tool in learning languages. By mastering and further understanding grammar knowledge, learners perform better in various language skills, including listening, speaking, reading and writing. Hence, grammar teaching always occupies an important position in English teaching. In addition, with the development of teaching practice, grammar teaching has been identified widely. However, the traditional English grammar teaching is teacher-centered, and the atmosphere in class is dull and tedious. In such way of grammar learning, students passively learn the knowledge and memorize grammar rules mechanically so that they cannot utilize the knowledge in various situations flexibly. So they lack enthusiasm, positive attitude and high motivation.The New National English Curriculum advocates that the English education should be reformed. The emphasis of the reformation is not to reduce the status of grammar teaching but to change the teaching ways. Thus the grammar still possesses the important status in foreign language teaching and it should still attain more attention. There are a lot of researches on cooperative learning in China and abroad, which show that the cooperative learning plays an active role in English teaching and learning. Besides, it is an advocated strategy in English teaching according to the education reform. In cooperative learning, the cooperation is built among students as well as between students and their teacher. It lays emphasis on mutual communication, cooperation, and respects. By the means of mutual cooperation and participation, it can build an active, ardent and harmonious atmosphere in teaching, which can arouse students to desire for new knowledge, to form a good mastery of the knowledge, and to use them effectively through various ways in their learning. Nevertheless, the research of applying this strategy in grammar teaching in senior high school is not sufficient. Hence, the author tried using cooperative learning in grammar teaching in order to change such an ineffective and time-consuming situation.Based on the relative theories of group dynamics, cognitive elaboration and zone of proximal development on cooperative learning, the author tried applying this strategy in English grammar classes connecting with the actual situation in senior high school in order to improve students'learning attitudes and motivation, to foster their cooperative awareness and ability, to advance their grammar learning effects and to cultivate their autonomous learning ability. So the author made the experiment so as to prove its effects. The subjects of this experiment are the students who come from two classes of SeniorTwo in Wuqiao Middle School. The two classes were at almost the same in English level, and taught by the same teacher. Class 1 was treated as the experimental class which adopted cooperative learning method in grammar teaching and Class 3 acted as the control class which used traditional teaching strategies in grammar teaching. The time for this experiment was from September, 2010 to January, 2011. The instruments in this research were made up of two questionnaires, one interview, and two tests. The author collected all the relative data and made careful analysis. The quantitative data was analyzed with the software SPSS17.0 adopting one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results of this experiment proved that applying cooperative learning in grammar teaching in senior high school is more effective than adopting traditional teaching methods: English achievements in EC have the significant improvement; in EC the students'learning attitudes and motivation towards grammar and English learning have been improved greatly;The students have great interest and high motivation in English learning; the autonomous learning ability in EC has been developed a lot.