The Application Of Cooperative Learning In English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Cooperative learning is a creative and effective teaching theory and strategy,which rose in the United States of America in the1970s and made practicalimprovement in the next10years. It requires that the teaching should not beteacher-centered any longer but student-centered, and group activities shouldbe the basic teaching form, which enables students to develop their subjectiveinitiative meet their needs of personal potential ability. The core ofcooperative teaching is making students accomplish a mutual goal via groupwork.In the early1990s, cooperative learning came into use in English teachingin China and achieved a lot. But it was seldom used in English writingteaching classroom. In order to improve students’ writing level, the authortries to implement cooperative learning in groups in writing classroom andhas an empirical study as to solve the following two problems:(1)Cooperative learning is helpful to arouse students’ interest and thenchange their writing attitude.(2)Cooperative learning is effective to improve students’ writing scores.This thesis deals with some theories about cooperative leaning and how toapply it to English writing teaching. Considering the level of my students, Idid an experiment between two Senior Three classes. Class Five is the experimental class using cooperative learning in writing teaching while ClassEight is the control class with a traditional way. The experiment lasted anautumn semester.This thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter begins with thebackground of the research and the significance and purpose of the study. Thenext chapter covers the theoretical bases of Cooperate Learning and writingteaching in China and abroad, mainly including four aspects: brief history ofCooperate Learning, current research situation of Cooperate Learning inChina, theoretical foundations of Cooperative Learning and how to applyCooperative Learning in English writing. Chapter three mainly validates theeffectiveness of using cooperative learning to improve Students’ Englishwriting. A pretest, two questionnaires and a posttest are performed inexperimental class and control class respectively. The research shows thatduring the posttest the students in the experimental class get higher marksthan those of the control class. About results and implications, theexperiments suggest that during English writing teaching, cooperativelearning can arouse students’ interest and enthusiasm in learning and make thestudents share experience and improve writing scores together. At the sametime, we should pay attention to the roles of teachers, the communication andfeedback among group mates. At last, this chapter involves the limitations ofthe research and the recommendations for future research.A conclusion is drawn from the research. Cooperative learning can have greater effects on raising the students’ English writing scores in SeniorEnglish writing teaching.