A Study On Students' Task-based Cooperative Learning

The reforms about College English Teaching emerge consistently,in which the task-based language teaching approach and the cooperative learning approach have drawn wide attention of teachers,scholars and educators.Up to now,most of the studies are conducted to prove the effectiveness of these two teaching approaches by means of empirical study from macro perspectives.However,fewer studies were conducted regarding the task-based language teaching approach(TBLT)to cooperative learning from micro perspectives,like influence of the types,features and procedures of tasks that are suitable for students to conduct sufficient cooperation.In the model of the traditional teaching approach,students tend to receive knowledge passively and teachers play the role of knowledge carriers.In the traditional English teaching classroom,students are accustomed to acquiring knowledge and completing tasks independently,which leads to a lack of communication and interaction in class.In order to improve the students' learning initiative and interactivity,the types,features and procedures of tasks which were suitable for students to have a good cooperation were investigated into,simultaneously,the effectiveness of the task-based cooperative learning was analyzed by means of questionnaires and the comparison between the scores of the students in the experimental group and the control group.Normally,tasks were designed for individuals.However,how to involve students in tasks and help them interact frequently with their group members remains to be a question.The model of task-based cooperative learning emphasizes on completing tasks by means of group cooperation,in which the types,features,and procedures of tasks are required to be appropriate for students' cooperative learning.It is exactly the main study point and innovation of this study.In this study,associated with a lot of theoretical researches,the features,types and procedures of the tasks that are suitable for cooperative learning are revealed.The results are then applied to the practical teaching experiment to verify the effectiveness of task-based cooperative learning.161 students from four classes of College English? and ? in ZUCC are selected as the subjects,among which two of the classes formed the experimental group and the rest two of the classes were selected to set up the control group.The members of the experimental group received the task-based cooperative learning approach for one semester,and the control group members still received the traditional teaching approach.Questionnaires were designed and conducted to the subjects both before and after the experiment.The result has indicated that the teaching approach which adopted the suitable types and procedures of tasks tends to improve the students' learning and academic performance by means of enhancing the students' learning interest,self-confidence as well as their autonomous learning ability.The result verifies the positive effect of the task-based cooperative learning on students' English learning,and it also shows that the tasks that are appropriate for cooperative learning should be endowed with features of interactivity as well as division of responsibilities and the performance should be evaluated according to the overall results of the whole group.The types of tasks can be listing task,ordering,sorting or classifying task,comparing or matching task,problem solving task,sharing personal experience task as well as project task.Besides,the procedures of tasks can be divided into three parts,that is,pre-task,task cycle and evaluation.However,further study is needed in this experiment.The method of getting students involved in class and raising their awareness of peer evaluation and self-evaluation requires to be explored.Therefore,the future orientations should be focused on establishing a more efficient task-based cooperative learning mechanism.