An Empirical Research On The Effects Of Cooperative Learning On English Writing Proficiency Of Senior High School Students

Cooperative Learning has been widely applied in classroom teaching in recent years. Originated in the United States in 1970 s, Cooperative Learning began to be accepted in many countries and widely applied in classroom teaching until 1980 s.Ever since Cooperative Learning was introduced in China in the early 1990 s, middle schools have conducted a number of pilot projects in some provinces. It requires that the teaching must take students as the center and the group activities as the teaching form. It is convenient for students to develop their autonomy and initiative to meet their individual demands and personal potential abilities.This paper aims to study the effects of Cooperative Learning on English writing proficiency of senior high school students. The research questions include: 1. Does Cooperative Learning have a positive effect on the use of English writing strategies of senior high school students? 2. Does Cooperative Learning have a positive effect on English writing achievements of senior high school students?The research, an experimental study on the effects of Cooperative Learning on the English writing proficiency of senior high school students, was conducted in Senior Grade One of Dongjiang High School. Two classes were chosen as research subjects. Class 3 was the control group(CC) while Class 4 was the experimental group(EC). The experiment lasted 4 months, during which the method of Cooperative Learning was applied to Class 4. In contrast, the method of conventional teaching was applied to Class 3. Two classes were taught by the same teacher, and students used the same teaching materials and examination papers. Students didn't realize that different approaches were used so that all of the teaching activities went naturally.Questionnaire, tests, and interview were conducted in the experiment. Questionnaires were designed on the base of “Writing Strategy Questionnaire” by Petric(2003). The research data was collected from questionnaires, tests and interview. And then detailed data analysis was conducted via SPSS 22.0. The results showed that Cooperative Learning had certain positive effects on improving English students' writing strategies and achievements.At the end of the thesis, according to findings of the research, the author found some related enlightenment and limitations of the research, then gave some relative solutions to future study.