A Study On Cooperative Learning In Business English Negotiation At Higher Vocational Technical College

Cooperative learning (CL) has received people’s more and more attention during the past few decades. Many studies demonstrate that CL provides a wide variety of educational advantages over traditional instructional models, but seldom can we see the use of CL in business English negotiation class.In this thesis, the author applies CL to Business English Negotiation Course (BENC) in Higher Vocational Technical College (HVTC) context, attempting to prove the feasibility of CL in a HVTC and to verify its validity by experimental study.In this study, an experiment is conducted in two classes of participants for a semester (sixteen weeks). The participants are81third-year Business English majors in Anqing Vocational Technical College. Of the two classes, one is the Experimental Class (EC) with40learners; the other is the Control Class (CC) with41learners. In EC, the author employs CL—learning cooperatively in small groups to achieve group goals. But in CC, the author still uses the traditional method-one-way transmission with little or no time for the participants to practise together.The questions to be addressed on this research are as follows:Q1:What are the students’attitudes towards CL? What are the changes after conducting the experiment?Q2:Can CL enhance students’ business English negotiation achievements?Q3:Can CL improve students’ negotiation abilities?During the process of the study, questionnaires, classroom observations, pre-test and post-test and interviews are used to collect the data that were then quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed.The major findings are summarized as follows:1. The students in EC are willing to accept CL. CL applied to BENC in higher vocational technical colleges has a positive impact. It is conducive to strengthening the students’learning motivations and to enhancing their self-confidence and self-esteem, which is beneficial to create a good emotional environment and increase the students’classroom participation, at the same time, it gives an opportunity to exchange ideas and improve effective learning.2. In contrast with the traditional teaching methods, CL can promptly increase the students’usiness English negotiation achievements.3. CL can improve students’negotiation abilities.This experiment indicates that CL has positive effects on BENC learning and teaching and shows that CL applied to BNEC in HVTC context is practical and feasible. CL fits powerful practice in higher vocational technical education and makes up the disadvantages of the traditional teaching method. Therefore, CL should be taken into consideration in higher vocational technical education in China. However, there are still some problems and limitations to be considered and solved in this study. Some suggestions are put forward for further studies.