Practicing Cooperative Group Work To Improve Students' Speaking Ability

The major goal of the English teaching in vocational school is to improve students' communicative competence,especially their speaking ability.However,the author finds that many students are afraid of speaking,and they show little interest in speaking communication.They do not know how to deal with the difficulties they meet,in other words,they do not actually know how to speak.The author thinks the traditional speaking teaching model should take the responsibility.This is due to the lack of interaction and real life context in traditional speaking classes.That is why the New English Curriculum Standard recommends using task-based approach and learning in group work in English classes so as to do things with words and foster students' comprehensive competence of using the language.The author has conducted an experiment,during which the control group was taught in the traditional way,while the experimental group was taught by the new method.After four months' experimental teaching,a speaking test and a post-trial were used to find out the difference.The results of the post test and post- survey showed that students' speaking ability in the experimental group had significantly improved.Simultaneously,creative thoughts have been obviously seen in the experimental group.Also,the author analyzes the present situation of speaking in vocational schools and the problems existed in speaking classes.In order to solve these problems,the author illustrates a new teaching method of speaking ----group work cooperative principles,which focuses on the real life context of the classroom and the interaction between students and teachers,students and students,students and speaking texts.The conclusion is that group work guided by cooperative principles proves to be an effective way to stimulate the students' interest of speaking and improve their speaking ability.