Research On The Application Of Cooperative Learning To Higher Vocational Course Teaching Of Business English Reading

For business English majors from higher vocational colleges, the course of businessEnglish reading is a very important but difficult basic course. However, the current teachingstatus quo for this course is not encouraging. The students’ English ability varies and they arein lack of relevant business background knowledge. What is worse, due to the influences fromtraditional teacher-centered English teaching contents and methods, plentiful English teachersonly regard English language as a set of isolated symbol system to educate students. In thisway, teaching vocabulary and grammar become almost the entire contents of teaching. Inclass, the traditional teacher-centered teaching of "grammar-translation method" is adoptedhabitually and almost all the classroom time is spent on vocabulary explanation and grammaranalysis. Actually, students could obtain fewer opportunities to practice in class.The cooperative learning methodology rises from the United States in the1960s and1970s, which requires team members’ labor division and cooperation. It also takes advantageof group-based assessment and inter-group competition to make a social and psychologicalatmosphere of team competition in order to enhance the effectiveness of learning. On the onehand, it makes learning opportunities equal. On the other hand, it makes a stronger learningmotivation. Cooperative learning emphasizes communication collaboration between teammembers. All team members are interdependent and intercommunicated to complete theconstruction of knowledge and experience to achieve common goals.According to the teaching status quo of higher vocational Business English reading andthe characteristics of cooperative learning, the author attempts to explore the teachingeffectiveness of cooperative learning in higher vocational business English reading, especiallyfor the impacts on students’ learning interests, attitudes, academic achievements, and classteaching atmosphere in learning business English reading. In this study, two business Englishclasses from Rizhao Polytechnic are chosen for subjects to have an18-week teachingexperiment. Each class has30business English sophomores. Class one were arranged toimplement cooperative learning, another30business English majors from class2as thecomparative class to be taught in traditional teacher-centered teaching methodology. Beforethe test, all aspects including academic achievement, motivation, and interest wⅠere notsignificantly different.To ensure the validity, the author employed plentiful research methods as follows: tests,questionnaires, classroom observation, and interviews. The data collected was processed with the help of SPSS17.0and Excel. Results and analysis of the data indicate that the cooperativelearning is an effective teaching strategy to higher vocational course teaching of businessEnglish reading. Cooperative learning could greatly stimulate higher vocational students toparticipate in business English reading in class, enhance their initiative and autonomy,improve their academic achievement, and heighten their learning interests and confidents. Atthe same time, this thesis also analyzes some potential disadvantages which will occur in theapplication of cooperative learning to higher vocational course of business English reading.Moreover, specific countermeasures are provided. In general, cooperative learning is aneffective teaching method to higher vocational teaching of business English reading. In orderto make cooperative learning widely applicable in higher vocational teaching of businessEnglish reading, some further research still needs to be implemented.