Cooperative Learning In Senior High School English Class—A Case Study

Cooperativeness, required by the time and the society, is one of the most fundamental abilities one needs to have to this day. Urged by new curriculum reform in China, policy-makers and teachers in expanding numbers have adopted Cooperative Learning in their work and emphasize on the training of cooperative ability. Textbook writers design diverse cooperative tasks in order to meet the need of Cooperative Learning. This paper explores the use of cooperative tasks from the textbook in senior high English classroom teaching, in order to inspire the textbook designer and the English teachers.This is a qualitative case study, which explores cooperative learning in one key Senior High School in DongCheng District. The case study focuses on English lessons of four classes in Senior2through classroom observation and interview to the four English teachers and48students (12students are randomly selected from four classes), in order to find out how English teachers use the cooperative tasks from New Senior English for China Student’s Book5. The study tries to answer the following questions:(1) Whether do English teachers use the cooperative tasks?(2) How do English teachers organize the cooperative learning?(3) Are students able to perform the cooperative tasks?The researcher finds out that the cooperative learning could be practically applicable in English teaching in the senior high school. Different type of cooperative learning is presented and the learning proves to be effective. But students still have poor ability to perform the tasks and not all can participate the cooperative learning. The key reason of which is that teachers ignore the training of cooperative strategies and lack the systematical evaluation. Through this analysis, the above stated advantages of cooperative learning are specifically elaborated while some problems such as difficulty in guaranteeing all-student participation and ensuring independent thinking. Thus, in the end, the author gives certain suggestions according to these problems for both policy makers, material designers and teachers to consider. In a word, the cooperative learning in senior high English class still have a long way to go because of the limited time and the pressure from National College Entrance Examination. The textbook designer should design more appropriate cooperative tasks and teachers should foster student’s cooperative learning step by step and improve the efficiency of cooperative learning.