A Study On A Cooperative Writing Strategy In Senior English Classroom

Writing is an important part in English learning. The teaching aims of English in syllabus of China's middle school state that the senior middle school students must have certain skills about listening, speaking, reading and writing, among which writing is the most difficult skill to develop. Writing is very different from speaking, because writing requirement is higher than speaking. So I want to investigate a cooperative writing strategy— discussion in senior English classroom.Cooperative learning can be defined as a range of concepts and techniques for enhancing the value of student-student interaction. Discussion, one of the cooperative strategies, once used in the students' writing is believed to promote students' thinking and creativity in many ways. According to Johnson and Johnson (1986), there is persuasive evidence that cooperative teams achieve at higher levels of thought and retain information longer than students who work quietly as individuals. The shared learning gives students an opportunity to engage in discussion, take responsibility for their own learning, and thus become critical thinkers (Totten, Sills, Digby, & Russ, 1991). The study attempts to carry out an experiment on the teaching of English writing Senior three of Pingxiang Middle School. The duration of the study is a semester. The thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter One offers an introduction. After introducing the importance of English writing, this chapter shows the problems that the teacher only pays attention to the writing results and ignores the process of writing and the consciousness of readers. And it lists the typical problems in the teaching methods of English writing in China. The chapter also introduces the significance and purpose of the study.Chapter Two is a literature review. The chapter tells us what is cooperative learning, why we use cooperative learning and what makes cooperative learning work. Then it introduces negotiation and discussion. The chapter also introduced "the writing process", advocating cooperative learning and encouraging students to help each other through discussion, to give peer feedback and write cooperatively in the...