The Application Of Cooperative Learning To The Teaching Of Writing In Senior High School

Cooperative Learning has been one of the prevailing methods in the field of language teaching in the past twenty years or so. Cooperative Learning is a kind of learning that students are all engaged in various study activities, which need cooperation and mutual support in groups of two to six people. They work together to finish the learning tasks assigned by teachers. Cooperative Learning reflects the characters of human communication and cooperation. Many research results show that cooperative learning is helpful in strengthening students'confidence of learning English; improving students'interests of learning English; enhancing students'self-consciousness and improving students'abilities of listening,speaking,reading and writing. Cooperative Learning can also improve the qualities and benefits of English teaching.English writing is a course of cognition. Writing is the communicational ability of written language expression and information transmutation. English writing can reflect the students'abilities of using the language more objectively. However, in current teaching, the teaching of writing is ignored, which leads to the result that their compositions are of poor quality. Therefore, the writer tries to combine the Cooperative Learning with writing of teaching, and points out a cooperative writing model in teaching writing. It follows: familiarization demanding—group discussion—cooperative writing—peer editing and teacher commenting. In the step of familiarization demanding, the teacher gives the writing task, and makes sure that the students are familiar with the task;The leader of the group organizes the discussion, and the students discuss; write and correct and it is helpful for them to find their mistakes in their writing. In the step of teacher commenting, teachers only comment on the content and structure of the article, giving opinions of correcting. Teachers can praise some beautiful sentences and articles. In this way, each student will write it cooperatively for himself or herself and their group, and it can improve the writing ability of each member, the ability ofcorrecting but also the cohesive force of the group.The research puts the Cooperative Learning into the English teaching of writing and hopes to test this teaching method through the experiment. The researcher conducted an experimental study in Senior English high school. The experimental class received the cooperative method of learning while the control class the traditional way. The data collection includes the following techniques: two English tests of English writing and error's correcting, two questionnaires, and field notes of students'samples. The following is a summary of the findings of the study. In the pre- test of English writing and error's correction, the experimental class and the control class have not gained differences. While after the experiment, the students in the experimental class have improved their writing ability more than the students in the control class. Motivation, learning interest and self-esteem are greatly enhanced in the experimental class. The social skills, interpersonal relationship and cooperative personality are improved in the experimental class.The research has enriched the theoretical research with applying Cooperative Learning theory to English, and further confirmed its important function in English teaching of writing. It has made significant attempts to establish an effective model of teaching writing and provides some new ideas for teaching reform in English writing.