A Study Of Cooperative Learning In Primary School With Xueshenglu Primary School Of Jiaozuo As An Example

State Council’s Decision on the Reform and Development of Elementary Educationpoints out:“encourage cooperative learning, promote students’ mutual communication anddevelopment, and benefit both teachers and students.” National Standards for English Coursepoints out that the focus of the reform of English curriculum is to change the status quo inwhich over emphasis is laid on explanations of grammar and lexis, but neglecting thecultivation of learners’ practical language. It emphasizes curriculum design in view oflearners’ leaning interests, life experience, practice and cognitive ability, advocates learners’fulfilling their study task through experience, practice, participation, cooperation andexchange with teachers’ guidance, and advocates development of learners’ comprehensiveabilities of using English through task-based teaching approach. Owning to the developmentof cooperative learning theory and its effectiveness in raising learners’ improvement of studyand communicative ability, it has gradually become one of the mainstream teaching theoriesand methods.According to Wang Tan, cooperative learning is“a system of teaching strategy whichpromotes students to cooperate in heterogeneous teams toward a common goal, they arerewarded according to the success of their team”.(Wang Tan,2001) It is a supplement andimprovement to the shortage of classroom learning and individual study. It is a teachingapproach which is characterized with cooperative learning groups and takes group’sachievements as the evaluation criteria. Cooperative learning was presented by Slavin inUnited States in the early1970s, which got substantial progress in the1970s to1980s andbecame a creative and effective teaching method. It has proved to be effective in raisingstudents’ achievements, improving the classroom’s social psychological atmosphere and in promoting students’ good non-cognitive quality. Based on the theory of cooperative learningand with the gradual development of empirical research, application of cooperative learningteaching in our country draws more and more attention of experts and teachers in the1920s.According to the researcher’s summary of the researches of recent years, she found thatcooperative learning had more applied in university, senior or junior middle school’s Englishteaching. Few primary schools have had such empirical study. What’s more, according tostudents’ physical and psychological development in primary schools, how to applycooperative learning proficiently is very important.For the reasons, the researcher applied cooperative learning to122students ofXueshenglu primary school Grade5in Jiaozuo who were taken as subjects, with class one asthe experimental class and class two as the control class. In the experimental class, the authorapplied cooperative leaning while in the control class, the author used the traditional teachingmethods. By the experiment, the author tried to verify the validity of the application ofcooperative learning in primary school.The teaching research questions are:1. What is the current status quo of Grade5students’ English learning in primary school?2. Can cooperative learning be more effective in improving Grade5students’ Englishachievements in primary school?3. Can cooperative leaning improve under-achievers’ grades in Grade5and improvetheir sense of belonging?In this research the researcher used quantitative analyses. The research methods includequestionnaire, teaching experiment, interview and classroom observations. And the researchsteps are as follows:Before the experiment, the pre-questionnaire was carried on September12thand thepre-test was carried out on September15th,2013. Both of them were handed out to122 students both came from the experimental class and the control class, aiming at obtaining ageneral view of Grade5students’ English level in primary school and providing reference anddata for cooperative learning teaching experiment. According to the scores and their commonclassroom performance, the author picked out the bottom15students as under-achievers fromexperimental class. The data provided reference and data for the hypothesis2.Then the author carried out teaching experiment. The experiment lasted eighteen weeksfrom September1,2013to January20,2014. The author chose122students who were fromthe experiment class and the control class as the subjects. In the process of the experiment, theauthor applied cooperative learning to the experimental class, while in the control class; theauthor used the traditional teaching method.At the end of this term, the post-questionnaire was also handed out to the experimentalclass on January15, with the purpose of obtaining a general view of students’ status quo ofEnglish learning and their attitude towards cooperative learning. Then the post-test wascarried out on January17. The software SPSS was used to make comparison between testscores of pre-test and post-test both in CC and EC as well as the pre-test scores between CCand EC and the post-test scores between CC and EC. And the software SPSS was also used toget data of under-achievers both from CC and EC in the same way. The purpose is to examinewhether cooperative leaning has positive effect on students’ English leaning. At last, theresearcher also made an interview on the15under-achievers from the experimental class atdifferent time. Based on the data analysis of two tests, two questionnaires, the interview andthe classroom observations, we can see that its validity of cooperative learning in languageteaching and learning, hoping it can help the English teachers in their teaching process.According to the analysis, we can draw the following conclusions:1. There was no significant difference on students’ English level between theexperimental class and the control class before the experiment. 2. The Grade5students in primary school improved their achievements correspondinglyby the teacher’s application of cooperative learning. From the results of two tests, we foundout the students of EC got higher scores than those in CC, which verified the validity ofcooperative leaning in English teaching and learning.3. The achievements of under-achievers in EC of Grade5in primary school wereimproved by the application of cooperative learning. In addition, from the analysis ofclassroom observations and the interview on them, their sense of belonging could beimproved.