The Effective Application Of Cooperative Learning In An English Classroom With Students Specializing In Sports

The newly issued curriculum criterion of English advocates the learning style of experience, practice, participation, cooperation and interaction. It demands that the traditional teacher-centred teaching methods be changed into the student-centred, and encourages developing the integrated skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing by means of cooperation. The newly published textbooks attached great importance to helping students construct a system of knowledge and cultivating their creative capability.This research is aimed at exploring the effective application of cooperative learning approach in English classroom with students specializing in sports. Three research questions are addressed: 1. Compared with teacher-centered classroom, what psychological changes happen to sports students in cooperative learning? 2. How differently do students with aptitudes in sports behave in a cooperative learning classroom? 3. What possible difficulties do teachers encounter in implementing cooperative learning?The subjects are two Senior One classes, and Class One with 53 students is for experiment and Class Two with 56 students is the controlled class. A one-semester experiment was carried out from September 2004 to January 2005 to provide proofs to two hypotheses: 1. Cooperative learning helps increase sports students' academic achievement; 2. Cooperative learning approach improves overall climate of sports students English classroom. Questionnaire and interview are the main instruments for the writer to explore the psychological change of the students after they experience cooperative learning . The first exam, which was taken when Senior One students were just enrolled, is used as the pre-test; the final one, which was taken at the end of the semester, is used as the post test.The thesis is composed of 5 parts. Part I touches upon the purpose and significance of the research. Part II deals with the literature review. The writerexpounds the theoretical basis of implementing cooperative learning and introduces the researches ever done. Part III is the methodology, which includes subjects, instruments and procedures. The writer collected proofs to show the psychological change of the students through the analysis of questionnaire distributed to 109 students before the experiment and interview of 27 students after the experiment. A series of valuable, practical and creative group learning activities such as "group discussion","games" and "pairwork + groupwork"were designed and implemented in order to fully activate students' participation and collaboration. A group statistics and an independent samples test are given to testify that the two classes, the experimental and the controlled, were at the same knowledge level before the experiment. The t-test to the means of the post test shows that significant difference exists between the mean of the experimental class and that of the controlled class. Part IV is about the findings and discussion. The writer first summarizes the characteristics and advantages of cooperative learning with the reference of previous research and the present research. Besides, implications are presented both to teachers and learners, and strategies are introduced to solve the problems that arise when they implement cooperative learning approach. Part V is the conclusion of the thesis. Since the present research has limitations in taking two experimental variables into consideration only, further researches are suggested with a view to students' interest, age, sex and teacher's activities.More and more special classes are set up for students with aptitudes in sports and arts in senior middle schools, and this thesis is supposed to provide some implication to those who teach English for students with such aptitudes.