Application Of Group Cooperative Writing Strategy In English Teaching

Listening, speaking, reading and writing constitute an organic integration. Among the four basic skills of English learning, it seems that writing is the weakest point of high school students in China. Many high school English teachers find teaching writing a tedious and unrewarding chore. Although they are an important part of writing teaching, teachers' diligent attention, careful design and comments rarely seem to bring about improvements in subsequent work and better performance in students' writings. However, writing is a kind of process in which students express themselves in English by means of personal experience and understanding. Only in real practice can students experience the whole writing to develop and improve writing skill and competence. But traditional teaching approaches in writing just ignore students as the center in class, with teacher's teaching in place of students' learning activities.ELT in Chinese Secondary schools is now facing the curriculum reform. The reform centers on the transformation from the traditional emphasis on language points to emphasis on language skills at present gradually change the teacher-centered, classroom-centered and book-centered situation and promote the cooperation and communication between the students and the teachers. The essay consists of five chapters. In Chapter One and Chapter Two the author makes a questionnaire to explore the problems that the present English writing teaching exists. The questionnaire shows the main reasons that result in the low efficiency of most ELT classrooms in China and analyze the disadvantages of traditionalteaching approaches. And then follows a detailed explanation of the requirements raised by the English Course Criteria for the high school students. We put forward 'group cooperative writing strategy, that is to try applying the concept of participating positively, ready to quest, communicating and cooperating in the classroom to facilitate students' enthusiasm and interest in English, foster and improve writing ability.Chapter Three of the paper gives a detailed exploration of the theory of cooperative learning, dynamic is a prerequisite for cooperative learning; positive interdependence and individual responsibility of the group members are essential to cooperative learning. As it proves, cooperative learning environment is more helpful to the students' development than a competitive or an individual one. The theories of cognitive development social interdependence also contribute to the foundation of cooperative learning. Chapter Four carries out the experiment of cooperative learning in the writing class. Between cooperative teaching approach and the traditional one, the effect of cooperative writing is checked. In the end, some specific suggestions on the teaching practice of cooperative writing are given.