A Study On The Low Efficiency Of Cooperative Learning In Rural Junior Middle School English Classes

’New English Curriculum Standard’ advocates cooperative learning, this concept is gradually infiltrated into our junior high school English classroom teaching. For the current junior high school English teaching, cooperative learning is indispensable. However, not all cooperative activities can achieve the expected effect in the actual teaching process, due to the understanding of cooperative learning, many English teachers still don’t know cooperation learning well, so the low efficiency of cooperation learning is also not uncommon. Inefficient cooperative learning is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also teachers and students can not find a sense of achievement in the inefficient cooperative learning. At last, both teachers and students felt tired.This study intends to investigate the status of the rural junior high school English classroom cooperative learning, and then analysis the reasons for low efficiency of cooperative learning, using the reasons to improve the efficiency of cooperative learning strategies. Based on the analysis of the theoretical basis and data, this paper will address the following questions:How often do teachers use cooperative learning?1. Does English teachers’ attitude have an influence on students’ cooperative learning?2. Will teachers’ understanding of cooperative learning and main body of cooperative learning affect the efficiency of cooperative learning?3. Will teachers prepare make good preparations before starting cooperative learning?4. Will teachers conduct a comprehensive evaluation of cooperative learning after class?5. Do rural junior high school students’ personality, cooperative attitude, awareness and skills have an impact on the effectiveness of cooperative learning?In order to address these questions, the author interviewed 280 students and 11 English teachers in Nanjing Luhe District, Zhu Zhen Minzu junior middle school. Some English teachers were interviewed in order to understand the cooperative learning situation and reasons of low efficiency. This study consists of three steps:first, the author studies the status quo of English class cooperative learning through the interview with 11 English teachers from Nanjing Luhe District, Zhu Zhen Minzu junior middle school, and the questionnaire of eighth graders, analyzes reasons for low cooperative learning efficiency through data collection and proposes specific strategies for the improvement of cooperative learning effectiveness. Main research results are shown below:The low cooperative learning efficiency of English classes of the school fails to reach the expected effect. The author finds teacher factors from the interview with English teachers as follows:teachers use the learning pattern blindly and pay less attention to efficiency; teachers hold a negative attitude towards cooperative learning; teachers don’t under the connotation of cooperative learning; teachers lack of in-depth understanding of the main body of cooperation; teachers fail to make full preparation for activities; teachers give incomplete and unscientific assessment to cooperative learning, and so on. The questionnaire of 280 eighth graders showed, rural students are too introverted and timid to express themselves; students don’t hold a correct attitude towards cooperative learning; students have a weak awareness of cooperation and lack cooperative skills; students are accustomed to accept and so on.It is conducive to improving the efficiency of classroom teaching if teachers are adept in instructing students to carry out efficient cooperative learning, and to cultivate student’s cooperative consciousness and team spirit if they can realize their shortcomings and disadvantages through participating in cooperative learning positively. Therefore, teachers should raise the effectiveness of cooperative learning in English teaching. Solutions and countermeasures are proposed as follows:first, teachers should renew ideas, enhance the understanding of cooperative learning, master students’advantages, provide timid students with more opportunities to perform, build a relaxing learning atmosphere, enable students to speak bravely and willingly, instruct students to learn cooperation and learn form others’ strong points to offset their weaknesses, encourage their enthusiasm for group learning, look into students, study teaching materials thoroughly, choose activity contents carefully, optimize cooperative learning through competitive mechanism, and establish scientific evaluation mechanism including diversification of evaluation method and enrichment of evaluation language etc.