| Cooperative learning is a kind of teaching theory and strategic system,which grew up in 1970's in the United States,and was brought into focus and widely used by teachers in the late 1980's worldwide.The course of English Intensive Reading is one of the key courses of English major,with the aim of developing reading skills,further establishing good basic language skill,and cultivating comprehensive skills of English.But during the modern English teaching process,both the teacher and the students are used to the traditional way of teaching by using “spoon-feeding” method.In class,the teacher keeps talking and the students are busy writing down every word what the teacher says.Under such circumstances,the students would lose their learning initiative,and would easily foster their dependence upon the teachers.Thus,it is difficult to train the ability of the students to use the language.All this leads up to the research on the effectiveness of applying cooperative learning to intensive reading classes of English majors.Two questions were raised in this research as follows.1)Can cooperative learning stimulates English majors to take part in the intensive reading class enthusiastically,confidently and willingly?(2)Is cooperative learning effective in improving the intensive reading ability of English majors in colleges than that of the conventional teacher-centered teaching method?The subjects of this research are two classes of 60 sophomore students of English major in Foreign Language School of Shangqiu Normal University.The teacher and author randomly chose class one as control class in which traditional teaching method was utilized,and class two as experimental class using Cooperative Learning approach.The experiment maintained for one semester.Before the experiment,the teacher gave the students pretest and pre-questionnaire and the data were collected carefully.During the process of implementing the Cooperative Learning,the author observed both two classes from various aspects.Post-test,post-questionnaire and interviews are given to all of the students after the one-semester experiment.The final exam of Grade one of Intensive Reading was used as pre-test,and the final exam of the experimental semester was used as post-test.Relevant data were collected and analyzed quantitatively through SPSS 17.0.Qualitative analysis was made on the data collected from the two questionnaires and the interviews.The results and analysis reveals that the mean sore of experimental class(76.3567)was obviously higher than that of the control class(70.301)after the experiment,whereas before the research the level of the two classes were very similar to each other.By doing interviews,classroom observation and questionnaires,the researcher found that students of different levels are assigned into one group during the implementation of Cooperative Learning,then the students enhance their understanding toward the text or a certain topic through completing various tasks.The group members are supposed not only to understand the text they learned,but also to help other group members in order to make progresses together.In experimental class,the students are the center.They got more opportunities to speak English.In addition,compared with the students in class which applied traditional teaching approach,students in experimental class changed their attitude from accepting passively to participating actively,thus their learning initiative greatly improved.This research reveals some problems while implementing cooperative learning,and the samples have limitations too,but generally speaking,it is effective to utilize Cooperative Learning in English Intensive Reading classes.If the teachers could research further into the CL,and apply it to the classes better,the classroom atmosphere must be improved greatly,and the students' initiatives and abilities of using the language must be heightened accordingly. |
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