The Application Of Cooperative Learning To English Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High School

Curriculum Standards of High School(2003) make concrete requirements that students’ English competence should be divided into nine levels. The senior high school students should achieve the seventh level teaching requirement that the teacher should enable students to understand and grasp about 2,200 words and 300-400 expressions. But, more and more problems are emerging in the real English vocabulary teaching practice. For example, the teacher pays too much attention on the memorization of the vocabulary without any contexts so that once facing a real communicative situation, the students cannot retrieve the exact words to express their own opinions. What is more, dictation is always acted as a preferred assessment way to examine students’ knowledge, which will force students to learn vocabulary mechanically. The real dilemma lies not in how many vocabulary students should grasp very well but in what teaching method should be assumed. In this thesis, the Cooperative Learning(CL) teaching approach is applied to minimize the negative effects of present English vocabulary teaching. The author raises three questions to carry out this experiment. First, what are the effects of the CL on students’ overall English competence and the ability of mastering vocabulary? Second, what effects will exert on students’ cooperative spirit? Third, why does the CL produce such effects? 104 students are chosen as the subjects in this empirical research. They are from Senior Grade 1, Xining No.14 Senior High School. Class 8 is the experimental class composed of 52 students. Class 7 as the controlled class is also composed of 52 students. The author teaches the Class 8 by using the Cooperative Learning approach and the students in the Class 7 are taught by another teacher using the isolated way as usual to teach English vocabulary. The whole class is divided into 13 groups by heterogeneous grouping to take part in several teaching activities that are designed by the author in advance such as Students Teams-Achievement Division, Teams Games Tournament and so on and each group member undertakes different tasks. The duration of this research is one year, from January, 2014 to January, 2015.According to the data of the tests and the questionnaire showing, the CL is helpful to improve students’ overall English competence and the ability of grasping the vocabulary. Besides, it stimulates students’ learning interest in English vocabulary.Nevertheless, because the author’s research competence is insufficient, some defects can be perceived. This research is just a beginning. I will constantly rethink profoundly to amend the deficiencies, so as to make some contributions to the Cooperative Learning field.