An Experimental Study Of Cooperative Learning In High School English Writing Teaching

Owing to the wide use of English in the global environment and radical reform of the English Curriculum, students are faced with higher and higher pressure in English writing proficiency, which is considered to be the most difficult to improve in the four English basic skills. There are many problems in English writing teaching in senior high schools in China. For example, most English teachers still employ the traditional product approach and they don’t attach importance to cultivating students’ writing skills and interest, leading to students’ lack of confidence in English writing. Therefore, how to improve the writing proficiency of English has become urgent for numerous English teachers.Cooperative learning is considered one of the most effective teaching methods. It applies cooperative group structure to the classroom teaching and focuses on the interaction between students and their peers. It can greatly help achieve the goal of classroom teaching and promote the development of students’ personality and sociability by organizing students’ cooperative activities.This study attempts to make it clear whether cooperative learning is effective to promote the English writing proficiency in high schools. It concentrates on the following two questions:1. Can students’ writing interest be promoted by carrying out the cooperative learning in English writing class?2. Can students improve writing skill self-efficacy through cooperative learning in English writing class?In order to do this research, the researcher performed an experiment of 17 weeks in English writing teaching in Grade Two of No1. Middle School of Funing. Of the two classes which the researcher taught, Class 5 was selected as the experimental class and Class 6 was the controlled class at random.The researcher made a survey about the students’ attitudes towards English writing before the experiment. Besides, a pre-writing test extracted from the writing part of NMET in 2014 in Jiangxi province was given to students from both classes to ensure that students in two paralleled classes had almost the similar writing proficiency.In the experiment the researcher applied cooperative learning and traditional product approach to Class 5 and Class 6 respectively. The compositions written by students during the experiment were all graded according to the writing marking criteria of NMET and the relevant scores were used to evaluate students’ writing proficiency.After the experiment, the researcher also gave a survey to the students from experimental class. In addition, a post-writing test extracted from the writing part of NMET in 2014 in Zhejiang province was given to students from both classes. In the end, the researcher analyzed the data to find out whether there were some changes in students’ writing proficiency, writing interest as well as writing skill self-efficacy.Through the analysis and discussion of data based on this experimental study, the conclusions are drawn as follows: Compared with the students in the controlled class, the students in the experimental class have obviously improved their writing interest and writing skill self-efficacy and the difference is significant, thus resulting in a higher writing proficiency. However, it takes time and practice to consolidate students’ writing skill self-efficacy to achieve the maximum.Finally, the researcher puts forward some implications and suggestions, hoping that they will be helpful for the future research on the application of cooperative learning in high school English writing teaching.