Cooperative Learning In English Teaching Of Secondary Vocational Education Practice And Research

With the deepening of the global economic integration process, English is increasingly becoming an important language for international communication. In vocational schools, English has been one of the compulsory basic culture courses, and English itself is a basic skill for students to hunt for a job. Therefore, it is vital for teachers to apply effective teaching methods to improve the students’ English learning effect. The current vocational school English teaching, however, is far from being able to meet the needs of social development. Firstly, English has become a dispensable subject. Secondly, the phenomenon of teacher-centered teaching and the traditional mode of focus on the grades rather than students’ abilities have been existed. Thirdly, nowadays, most students lack general English knowledge, and they are weary of learning, low confidence in learning, and their self-learning ability is poor while they are lazy, all these reasons exert negative impact on the effect of English teaching in vocational school.After analyzing these circumstances, I think that only by improving teaching methods can teachers help to motivate students’ eager to learn. And these new methods should be suit students’ reality, accepted by them, and make them feel happy to learn, willing to learn, and finally train themselves masters in learning, and then at last they can gain English knowledge and skills. Based on my decade long vocational English teaching practice and experience, I hereby draw a new kind of teaching method:group-cooperating learning method. My study and experience show that group-cooperating learning method in vocational English teaching practice can enhance students’ learning motivation, while it can help students to create teamwork spirit on the other hand. With these two goals achieved, the quality and effect of English teaching can get improved greatly.Cooperative learning method originated in the USA. Since1970s, this new kind of teaching method has been gradually applied in countries all over the world. To apply this method well, a scientific reasonable grouping is the most important step. With the guidance of teachers, well-grouped students can benefit not only from mutual communication and competition within the group members but from the competition with other groups. All these activities can improve their interests and motivations to learn. In group-cooperating learning mode, students themselves are the leaders of learning while teachers’ roles are organizers, instructors, monitors.In China, group-cooperating learning method, however, is still a new thing. Few vocational schools apply it in English teaching practice, because of below reasons:most classes are large in students’number while most schools do not pay enough attention to English teaching; the number of teachers is small and the teaching quality is poor etc. Therefore group-cooperating learning method is seldom adopted by the vocational schools. So, in the course of application of this new kind of teaching method, still many problems need to be discussed and solved that need to be explored and resolved. Based on this reality, this paper firstly analyzes the studies、theories and basic elements related to group-cooperating learning method, and secondly analyzes the characteristics of cooperative learning and practical applications, and then finally discusses that how can teachers apply group-cooperating learning method to improve the quality of vocational English teaching.