An Application Of Cooperative Learning To Small Class English Teaching At Junior Middle School Level

With increasingly deeper reform in our nation’s new curriculum and continuous update in educational concept, more and more parents are calling for more qualified and targeted education. Small class education has thus become an inevitable trend in the development of education reform. The implementation of small class teaching is not only the pursuit of educational equity, but is also conducive to achieving the subject status of students. As a reform initiative, small class teaching will become one of the important models in quality education in the future by adapting to social changes and following the educational development trend.As a linguistic subject, the interaction in English class is more frequent than in other subjects, which requires smaller class size. In a small class context, teacher’s attention to each student is increased. At the same time, the frequency and efficiency in language practice are much increased and improved as well, both of which can not be achieved in large classes. Moreover, small class teaching can create more opportunities for group cooperative learning.The exploration of small class education first began in America at the beginning of20th century and has developed for more than100years. But the small class teaching in China is just in the exploratory stage. Most of the small class teaching practices are conducted at the form level of small class education by simply reducing the size of class only. Lacking enough useful experience and reference, many teachers continue using in their small size class the same traditional teaching methods that are used in big classes. As a result, the advantages of small class teaching are still not given full play. Therefore, the thesis will answer the questions as follows:1) What is the current situation of small class English teaching in junior middle school?2) How to exploit the full advantages of small class English teaching at junior middle school level?With the above questions in mind, the author of this thesis participated in the small class reform in Haiwang Middle School in Shenzhen and conducted an18-weeks teaching experiment. It found that the way to achieve the real advantage of small class teaching to full play is to conduct cooperative learning in small class teaching. This thesis aims to address the application of cooperative learning to small class English teaching at junior middle school level by theoretical analysis and teaching practice mainly. The author of the paper elaborates the small class teaching reform in Haiwang Middle School, and then makes preliminary definition of small class teaching and other related concepts. The author discusses the advantages of small class teaching and provides theoretical and practical basis for the development of small class teaching, then shows the important role of cooperative learning in small class English teaching and demonstrates the feasibility of small class teaching in China.