A Research On Cooperaitve Learning In Senior High School English Teaching In Rural Areas

Nowadays, there are many chances as well as great challenges in Englishteaching in senior high schools in China’s rural areas. With China’s rapid economicdevelopment, we are carrying out a new round of educational reform. However, theEnglish teaching in many senior high schools in rural areas stays a low level becauseof the restriction of many external conditions. The key to enhancing the Englishteaching efficiency is to change the English teaching method. Issued on May29th2001, The Decision on the Foundation Education Reform and Development of StateCouncil puts it like this,"we should encourage cooperative learning, promote thecommunication between students and help them develop together". Cooperativelearning will use teamwork as the most important and basic form. And it will makefull use of the interaction among all the aspects of the teaching activities. Thefostering of the students’ capability of communication and cooperation accords withthe trend of educational reform. As one of the most practical strategies, CooperativeLearning will help learners to work together for a common target in groups. It is veryhelpful with the learners’ academic performances, social skills and emotionaldevelopment. Therefore, to apply Cooperative Learning in senior high schools in ruralareas accords with the requirements of the curriculum reform in China nowadays.This paper analyses the history of Cooperative Learning and summarizes theresearch achievements of the experts and scholars home and abroad. In China, wehave "Anyone who learns alone without friends will be ignorant", a saying which hasa history of two thousands years. And these years, because of the research work ofProfessor Wang Tan and many other experts, Cooperative Learning develops quicklyin our country. And in the west we also have the thoughts of Cooperative Learning. Asfar as we know, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus put forward the idea of CooperativeLearning in the first century. From the1960s, with the hard work of Johnson Brothersand many other scholars, Cooperative Learning is developing fast, and the idea ofCooperative Learning is widely accepted by both teachers and students. Althoughthere are still many different opinions about Cooperative Learning, experts and scholars home and abroad all agree that the three essential elements of CooperativeLearning should include heterogeneous groups, working together and groupevaluation. This paper finds that there are seven core elements in the CooperativeLearning, such as Positive interdependence, personal responsibility, good teamworkskills, peer assessment, face to face promotive interaction, interage grouping and theteachers’ role. There are many teaching strategies about Cooperative Learning. Thesestrategies include Student Teams-Achievement Divisions, Teams-Games-Tournament,Jigsaw, Group Investigation, Learning Together, Teams-Accelerated Instruction, andCooperative Integrated Reading and Composition and so on. There are also manysocial and psychological theories that are supporting Cooperative Learning. AndCognitive Elaboration Theory is among the eight most valuable ones.What this paper focuses on is the advantages and problems about CooperativeLearning in senior high schools in rural areas. And this paper tries to find out somepossible ways to solve the problems. This paper is based on the theory of CooperativeLearning. The experiment lasts for one semester. And two tests and a questionnaireare used in this research. The research finds that Cooperative Learning has manyadvantages over the traditional teaching methods and it can help improve the students’English level in senior high schools in the rural areas. Also we can find someenlightenment in many aspects, such as the teachers’ level, the students’ level and theteaching level from this research. However, there are also some aspects that arelimited because of the current conditions in the rural areas. One of the limits is that wedon not have a clear understanding of Cooperative Learning. Another limit is thatthere are not immediate evaluations or assessments about the cooperative activities. Athird one is that cooperative activities mainly happen in the classroom teaching. As aresult of the research work, this paper puts forward some possible suggestions tryingto solve these problems.