A Study On The Effects Of Small Group Discussion On The Exam Marks Of English Learners In Senior High Schools

Since1970s, Hedge put forward the idea of small group discussion. Small groupdiscussion advocates learner-centered learning, learner autonomy, collaborativelearning and learning through tasks. The traditional teaching method accorded moreattention to the language teaching, which focused on teachers instead of learners.However, small group discussion cares more about students’ participation. The newcurriculum emphasizes on the learners’ interest, life experience and cognitive level,advocating participation and cooperation. The important advantages of small groupdiscussion are: caring most about students’ self development and building ademocratic and open class, which will enable students to take part in learningactivities positively. Therefore, small group discussion is the inevitable product forhigh school English classrooms.It is hypothesized that small group discussion is affirmative to the exam marksof English learners compared with the traditional teaching method. This study madean experiment on two normal classes in Shenyang Senior High School. The purposeof the research is to test if small group discussion can actually improve the students’exam marks and to investigate what factors affect small group discussion. Theresearch methodology includes: questionnaire, experiment and interview. Thesoftware SPSS is used for data analysis.The results of the research are as following:1. Small group discussion has apositive effect on English learners’ exam marks.2. Factors such as self-confidence,preparation and teacher’ praise directly influence the successful implementation ofsmall group discussion.3. The distribution of small group discussion is significant toimprove the exam marks of English learners. Basing on the above results, the studyhas a great influence on the smooth and effective implementation of small groupdiscussion. This study is also useful to the future research of the relationship betweensmall group discussion and learners’ exam marks. It is believed that the study ishelpful to students’ exam marks and all-round development.