An Investigation Of Cooperative Learning In Junior High School English Teaching

Nowadays, the world has witnessed the rapid development in science andtechnology, the emerging knowledge economy and the more fierce competition innational power.Education has been holding a basic position in the foundation of acountry’s comprehensive power, which depends more and more on the quality of thework force, the quality and the quantity of different types of talents. Thus it raises amore pressing requirement for the cultivation and education of a new generation ofChina in the21stcentury.Facing the new situation, our country has put forward plansto deepen our educational reform and carry out the quality-oriented educationroundly.As is known to all, the junior high school English class is the main place forcarrying out the quality-oriented education and a new round of teaching reforms hasbegun in all parts of the country since the new curriculum criterion was put intopractice.The new curriculum advocates that students should change their passive wayof learning into active, cooperative and explorative ones. Group-based cooperativelearning strategies were introduced into the daily teaching process, hence such famousschools in practice as Dulangkou and Yangsi.Scholars and experts in China has madedeeper researches on cooperative learning strategies and more and more front-lineteachers have been attempting to adopt these strategies into their teaching practicecombining with their own subject characteristics.Till now, the group-based cooperative learning strategies have been adoptedwidely and had distinct effects on teaching results. However, what effects does it haveon the junior school English teaching? What problems have occurred during theprocess of teaching in this way? And what reflections should be made after theseproblems have arisen? Thus, this research paper tries to analyze the current situationin which the strategies were adopted in the junior high school English teaching, basedon the author’s teaching practice and the research and interview made on teachers andstudents. And then after reflecting on the problems found in these analyses, it alsobrings forward some rational and adoptable suggestions on teachings, in an attempt toput the strategies into full play in English classes, arouse the students interests in English learning, decrease polarization, and enhance their comprehension Englishability.The paper is composed of four chapters. This first one is literature review,mainlyintroducing the relevant research done at home and abroad and the current conditionsin which cooperative learning strategies are adopted in the junior high school Englishteaching in China. The second chapter introduces some basic theories concerningcooperative learning, cognitive development theory, constructivist learning theory,Maslow’s need hierarchy theory and pyramid learning theory. The third chapterdiscusses the application of cooperative theory in English teaching of junior highschool through teaching experiments. The experimental classes were taught in “threesteps and seven segments”teaching mode adopted in our school. It was shown,through the comparison and analyses of the scores students got before and after theteaching, that the pass rate of students in the tests can be greatly improved after theteaching mode was adopted, thus proving that the scores of students, especially theones with learning difficulties, can be improved by it. The fourth chapter makes aconclusion by the enlightenment we get by teaching English with cooperativestrategies in junior high school, such as, in the teaching mode of group cooperation,teachers must break with the old ideas and take our students as the center, who tries toarouse students’ cooperative desire, and provide guidance on the way of learning forstudents and supervision and control during the cooperation process. Teachers canalso employ sound grouping and assessment strategies to promote the internalcohesive force within the group and hence the common progress among the groupmembers can be achieved in the end. Through this research, the author can have achance to focus on the impact cooperative learning has on English teaching andlearning, through which a better understanding towards the interaction andcommunication teachers and students made during the process of teaching can beattained, problems and puzzles during the teaching can be solved timely, and what’s more, the research on the English teaching in junior high school can be promoted.