The Effects Of Cooperative Learning On College Freshmen’s Learning Of Argumentative Essays

Argumentative writing is a very important part in English teaching. It embodies thecomprehensive ability of students and also demonstrates an important factor in college Englishteaching. There are many problems in college freshmen’ s English composition, especially insyntax. However, argumentative writing is a difficult point in college English teaching. With thedevelopment of society and economy, the requirement of English writing ability for collegestudents is even higher. Compared with English oral teaching, listening teaching, the history ofEnglish writing teaching is transient. In order to cultivate college students’ Englishcomprehensive ability, especially their argumentative writing ability, we should explore theapplication of English in international background.The thesis, whose theoretical bases are communication strategies in second languageacquisition, the theory of social cohesiveness and input and interaction in second languagelearning, studies and summarizes the achievements about the argumentative writing teachingfor years at home and abroad. It also combines the present situation of English argumentativewriting in colleges and puts forward the writing approach of cooperative learning. In order toverify the effect of this method, the author of this thesis carries out an eighteen-week experimentstudy in two classes of Grade One in Hunan Foreign Economic Relation and Trade College. Oneis established as the Experimental Class and adopts the writing approach of cooperative learningto carry out argumentative writing teaching while the other is established as the Control Class andadopts the traditional writing approach to carry out argumentative writing teaching. Theexperimental result shows that English writing scores of the students from the experimental classimproves more obviously than those from the control class.After analyzing the results of the experiment, the author of this thesis concentrates on theenlightenment on argumentative writing by cooperative learning from three aspects. The threeaspects are:(1) improving college students’ argumentative writing interest;(2) enhancing collegestudents’ writing autonomy;(3) cultivating and developing argumentative writing skills.Consequently，the approach of cooperative learning is an effective way to improve collegefreshmen’ argumentative writing competence in colleges.