Cooperative Learning In Senior Middle School English Reading

In the traditional teacher-centered English teaching, the transmission of information between teachers and students is mainly teachers. In this type of classroom the teacher serves as an information giver, and knowledge flows only one way from teacher to students. Teachers take up most time to teach students to learn knowledge, and students silently and passively receive some limited knowledge just like observers or containers. Few students have the opportunity of practicing and exchanging English. It is very difficult for students to take part in the class activities. Cooperative learning has emerged as the leading new approach to classroom instruction abroad over the past decade. Numerous research studies have revealed that students completing cooperative learning group tasks tend to have higher academic test scores, higher self-esteem, and greater numbers of positive social skills. Cooperative learning is student-centered. As a result, students become the principal part, they have more opportunities to practice English and the process of language acquisition can be guaranteed. In fact, the utmost purpose of English teaching is "to learn" but not "to teach". Cooperative learning can stimulate students to participate in English learning so that they can enhance their learning effect. The essential element of cooperative learning is that one cannot succeed without the success of others. In order to maximize their achievement, group members must often help each other and contribute their most to the group.The twenty-first century is an era of knowledge economy, and information plays a very important role in our ordinary life. It is crucial for everyone to get information and enhance the ability of obtaining information. A reading knowledge of a foreign language is often important to academic studies, professional success and personal development. And reading is one of the most efficient ways to acquire information needed. One of the basic demands of syllabus is that developing students' reading abilities should be emphasized. Now, new English course standard put forward a kind of new teaching theory called cooperative learning, it regards the cooperative group as the basic form, making use of the interaction of every kind to improve the students' understanding of a subject. Cooperative learning has been proclaimed as an effective instructional approach in promoting the cognitive and linguistic development of learners of English.The paper attempts to explore how to put the cooperative learning theory into practice of promoting the students' reading ability in senior English teaching and what are the students' attitudes to cooperative learning in English reading.In order to find the answers to these hypotheses, the researcher did an experiment on two classes in a senior middle school. One is exposed to cooperative learning approach , which the method of student teams-achievement divisions (STAD) is used most of the time, while the other the traditional teaching approaches. By analyzing the results, the researcher concludes that students' reading competence has been improved a lot, and they hold a positive attitude towards cooperative learning. It is feasible to apply cooperative learning approach in the teaching of reading in the senior middle school in China.The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter1 Introduction, which includes the background of the present study and a brief introduction of the whole thesis. Chapter 2 provides definitions of cooperative learning (CL) and explores the rationale for cooperative learning of senior English. Chapter 3 deals with the experimental research. The author conducts an experimental research in two classes for a term. Two questionnaires and interviews are conducted too to support the experimental study. In Chapter 4 the relevant data were collected. The researcher analyzes and discusses the collected data. And then sums up the findings of the experiment. Finally, in Chapter 5, a conclusion is made of the study, and implications as well as suggestions for further studies are given.