Cooperative Learning In Developing Reading Skills

One of the most important outcomes of the present reform in education is more student involvement in classroom. Being educators, we need to actively encourage students to think about their own learning and make our classroom comfortable and a stimulating place for them to learn. To do this, this author suggests the Cooperative Learning approach be applied to the reading classroom.The purpose of this study is to explore the efforts of CL Approach in senior high school in China. In detail the paper aims at investigating (1) Can CL approach improve the students' reading abilities? (2) Can CL approach make the reading class more lively and interesting? (3) Can CL approach motivate students to participate more in reading class?In order to find the answer to the questions, the researcher did a teaching experiment (March, 2004—July, 2004). The participants in this research are senior high school students of class 1 and class 2, Grade one in Yongcheng No.1 School, Henan Province. They are divided in random, but they have almost the same conditions. The two classes share one teacher who was the researcher. They have the same textbooks, Senior English for China BooklB. The only difference between the two classes is that they are exposed to different teaching approaches. One class is exposed to CL approach and the other, the traditional teaching approach.The results of the experiments show that CL approach can cultivate students' interest and improve their abilities in reading. It is absolutely feasible to apply CL approach to developing reading skills.