On Heterogeneous Cooperative Learning In Middle School English Learning

Cooperative learning has been widely used as a new approach or a model all over the world. In English teaching in our country, group activities are quite often adopted in classroom teaching to make sure that students can have many chances to practice English. But heterogeneous cooperative learning is seldom used or studied by the English educators in the English teaching field. In this thesis, the writer tries to prove that HCL can do better than any other kind of cooperative learning in promoting all the students to help and learn from each other so as to eliminate polarization of students' English competency and facilitate English teaching. This thesis consists of six chapters.In the first chapter, the writer proves that HCL is scientific and feasible. The Input hypothesis, the collective power theory and the affective filter hypothesis all support the fact that students' learning in heterogeneous group can provide and get more comprehensible input, complement and reinforce each other better and have lower affective filter and so obtain and let in plenty of input.In the second chapter, by discussing the seriousness of polarization of students' English competency, the problem of task-based language instruction and the psychological problems of the students, the writer draws the conclusion that HCL is necessary.In the third chapter, we will discuss some preparations for the application of HCL. Such preparations are to be done as forming and reconstituting heterogeneous groups, issuing group rules, teaching students cooperative techniques and so on.In the fourth chapter, various strategies of heterogeneous cooperative learning such as student teams-achievement division (STAD), DG technique, information gap, role-play, work-sharing-and-cooperation cooperative discovery, jigsaw, three-step interview, and discussion-writing-correction activity are introduced to the basic language knowledge learning including vocabulary, grammar, function and topic...