The Application Of Cooperative Learning Theory To English Writing In Senior High School

Cooperative learning theory is a kind of creative and effective teaching strategy which emerged in America in 1970 s. In this theory, students are made to be the center of teaching. Team activity is the main way of teaching in order to raise students’ enthusiasm and develop their creativity. The teacher is the participator, instructor, not the leader.At present, there are four kinds of learning styles. they include student and student interaction, teacher and student interaction, teacher and teacher interaction and student and machine interaction and all students interaction. In this thesis, the author mainly takes the teacher-student interactive cooperative learning as the main method to do her research on students’ English writing.The experiment was conducted in Neiqiu No.1 middle school in Hebei province. The author used teacher-student interactive cooperative learning theory to conduct the experiment. About 96 senior high school students from two classes of Grade Three were chosen as the subjects of the study. These students are all from two parallel senior 3 classes. Class 8 is the experimental class and class 9 is the controlled class. Students from experimental class were taught in the teacher-student interactive cooperative learning theory, and students in controlled class were taught with the way they used before. The controlled class consists of 48 students, and the experimental class has 48 students, too. These students were taught by two different English teachers during this experiment. The author herself volunteered to teach the experimental class, and the another young teacher taught the controlled class. As these students are boarders, they do not receive any kind of writing trains before this experiment. In this study, there are two kinds of instruments:(1) two questionnaires including the pre-questionnaire and the post-questionnaire are used to find whether students change in attitudes, interest and scores before and after the experiment;(2) two test papers are used to measure students’ writing performance and writing ability. These two tests are pre-test and post-test which are two compositions. This experiment aims to improve students’ writing ability and teaching efficiency.This paper is divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction which mainly include the background, significance and purpose of the study, and the structure of the thesis. Part two is literature review. It mainly illustrates the definition, elements and types of cooperative learning theory, the current research situation of cooperative learning theory abroad and in China, theoretical bases of English writing and three theoretical bases of cooperative learning theory and English writing. Part three is the research methodology. In this part, the author explains the research hypotheses, subjects, experiment instruments and material research procedures. Chapter four, data collection and discussion, generally talks about the data collection and analysis of two questionnaires and two test papers. Chapter five, the conclusion, is mainly about the major findings, limitations of the experiment, implications and suggestions.