Application Of Cooperative Learning In English Vocabulary Teaching Of Secondary Vocational Schools

English is one of the compulsory fundamental courses for secondary vocational students. In recent years, secondary vocational education has witnessed a dramatic development. However,along with the introduction of flexible enrollment policy, the quality of the students has declined,which causes difficulties in teaching activities, especially English teaching. Problems, such as a poor English proficiency and a lack of interests in English learning, prevail among secondary vocational students, especially reflected in their English vocabulary learning.Cooperative learning theory is one of the mainstream teaching theories today. It advocates that teaching activity should be centered on students' interaction and supplemented by teacher-student interaction and teacher-teacher interaction. It demonstrates distinctive effects in improving students' confidence in study, improving students' academic performance and establishing self-learning habits. Therefore, this thesis intends to apply cooperative learning mode into English vocabulary teaching, and discuss its promotion effect in vocabulary learning.This paper starts with a questionnaire study concerning students and teachers of 8secondary vocational schools in Zibo, which is designed to have better understanding of their attitude towards cooperative learning and vocabulary learning. Then, a teaching experiment involving two classes(40 students each) is conducted and lasts for two terms, during which,many instruments were used such as questionnaires, interviews, pre-test and post-test. All the data has been analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively after the experiment. The data includes the pre- and post- questionnaire study about the students' attitude to cooperative learning from experimental class, and the students' scores of pre-test, mid-test and post-test from both experimental and control classes. Through careful collection and analysis, the experiment indicates: the fact that the students of the experimental class have improved greatly after the experiment, while those of the control class show no obvious change proves that group cooperative learning produces positive impact on vocabulary learning; group cooperative learning stimulates students' interests in English learning and promotes their self-study ability and cooperative ability.To combine the results of the questionnaire survey and teaching experiment, this thesis has drawn the following conclusion: although some students perform inactively in group study,cooperative vocabulary learning has proved to be an effective way to improving students' English and therefore has great potential to be widely applied in secondary vocational English teaching.