A Study Of Cooperative Learning’s Influence On The Achievements Of Students With English Learning Difficulties In Junior High Schools

Currently, China’s education is in a crucial period. There’s a transformation from the examination-oriented education to quality-oriented one. According to the requirements of the quality-oriented education, teachers should be fair to every student and guarantee every student’s equal opportunity of all-around development. In other words, whether the student can make a good score or not, close attention should be paid to him or her. However, teachers often ignore students with learning difficulties, for their poor academic performance. Students with learning difficulties refer to those who can’t meet the standard of syllabus, and usually can’t reach the average grade with normal intelligence and healthy mental state. They are often despised by the top students. In such an environment, many of them lack self-independence and the interest in learning.Due to a variety of reasons, a large number of students with English learning difficulties exist in junior high schools in our country. It has brought great difficulty to the improvement of English teaching quality. Therefore, it’s an urgent and important task for all of English teachers to help students with learning difficulties get out of trouble.Great attention has been paid to the strategies to transform students with learning difficulties. Cognitive Elaboration Theory and the Theory of ZPD show that communication can promote students’ English study. However, in traditional teacher-centered class, teachers spend too much time and energy explaining the textbook to students. Wang Tan(2002: 6) puts forward that cooperative learning is an effective approach for students to make up for the loss of intercommunication with others in class. It is a kind of teaching form in which students fulfill a specific amount of learning tasks in groups through interdependent and interactive activities, which has aroused great attention. So the researcher attempts to apply cooperative learning method to English classes in junior high schools, aiming to testify whether cooperative learning can improve the academic achievements of the students with English learning difficulties or not.Although quite a lot of researchers have studied the theories of cooperative learning, few of them have attempted to use this strategy to help students with English learning difficulties in junior high schools. Therefore, this research has significance in the development of students with learning difficulties.In order to fully learn about cooperative learning’s influence on students with English learning difficulties in junior high schools, the author did a teaching experiment in two classes at Puyang No.3 Middle School. The researcher chose the students with English learning difficulties in Class Five as the experimental participants and those in Class Six as the control participants. In Class Five, the author applied the strategy of cooperative learning to students’ English study while in Class Six the author used the traditional teacher-oriented approach. In this research, pre-test, post-test, questionnaire investigation and interview were used to help the researcher to analyze the results of the study.Based on the results of questionnaire and interview, the author discussed the functions of cooperative learning on English students with learning difficulties. It is favorable for enhancing students’ self-confidence, stimulating their motivation, and cultivating their team spirit. All of these factors contribute to the mental development of students with learning difficulties. After analysis of English scores between the students with learning difficulties in two classes, the author safely draws a conclusion that cooperative learning can greatly improve the academic achievements of students with English learning difficulties in junior high schools.