An Application Of Cooperative Learning In College English Reading Teaching

As one of the four major skills in a language, reading plays an indispensable role in the process of learning. Reading course can cultivate students’ reading skills, promote their reading ability, help them form a sound reading habit and improve their integrated English.College English reading is still an important skill for the students. However, the teaching of reading can’t reach the teaching goals. Students still have problems in the process of reading. The traditional teaching method is still teacher-centered. From the explanation of every word, phrase and sentence, students get the understanding of the whole passage. This kind of teaching method can hardly raise students’ interest in reading more, and it neglects to cultivate students’ integrated ability to some degree. Students in this kind of class have little communication with their teacher and other students. They hardly express their thinking, or they have little time to think about it. It is difficult for them to read effectively.Based on this phenomenon, the author in this thesis tries to find out whether the application of Cooperative Learning in college reading class is a feasible and effective way in English reading teaching. The author conducted the experiment from March to June in 2014. She selected her two classes as the subjects of the experiment. One was the control class, while the other was the experimental class. During the experiment, the two classes were adopted in different teaching method. Cooperative Learning was applied in the experimental class. Students learned reading passages from cooperation and communication. The control class was taught with the traditional teaching method which meant during the teaching, the teacher taught the students word by word and sentence by sentence. By knowing the language points, the students understood the meaning of the whole passage. The author employed pre-test, post-test and questionnaires to conduct the experiment. The result of the experiment shows that the use of cooperative learning can improve students’ reading achievements greatly compared with traditional teaching. After the application of Cooperative Learning in reading class, students are willing to read. Their reading achievements are improved. The use of Cooperative Learning has caused positive effects on college students’ reading, and also the good atmosphere of college class.From the results and discussion, the author combines with the actual teaching practice and offers some suggestions and pedagogical implications about the application of Cooperative Learning in college reading class in order to promote the mutual development for both the teachers and the students.