An Investigative Study Of Cooperative Learning In Senior High School English Class

Currently, the voice for the reform of the classroom teaching is becoming louder and louder when the drawbacks of traditional classroom teaching is becoming apparent. "Teacher-centeredness" is the main feature of the traditional teaching mode, which emphasizes "the teachers are the knowledge imparters" and "students are the knowledge acceptors". The process of learning in traditional teaching mode is a passive process and inefficient which could affect the students’ enthusiasm and interest of learning. Cooperative learning came into being in this context. Cooperative learning originated in the United States from the early seventies of the last century, and obtained substantial development in the later decades of research and practice, forming the effective and operational theory and methodology. Cooperative learning emphasizes "student-centeredness". It is a type of learning in which the students need to complete the common learning objectives with a clear division of labor in groups.Cooperative learning emphasizes that under the guidance of the teacher, the students need to carry out the division of tasks, exchange their ideas and discuss with their group members and show the results of their group discussions in an orderly manner. In this kind of learning process, students’ participation is high, and the opportunities of performance of the students are increasing, so the interaction between teachers and students can be realized. Cooperative learning advocates cooperating for the group or collective interests, and the assessment of their outcomes are evaluated by groups, expecting to enhance students’ solidarity and cooperation consciousness and cooperative skills, cultivate a collective sense of honor and realize the all-around development of knowledge, skills and personality.There are several theoretical basis for cooperative learning. Basing on constructivism theory, social interdependence theory, theory of cognitive development and motivation theory, the author discusses the relationship between these theories and cooperative learning. The research questions in this thesis are therefore put forward as follows:(1) Can cooperative learning improve the efficiency of English learning and teaching?(2) What are the problems existing in cooperative learning?(3) What strategies can be applied to solve those existing problems?In order to answer the questions above, the author did an experiment in Xi’an Tieyi Binhe High School. The teaching experiment lasted five months through the implementation of two different teaching methods of the control class (Class 2) and experimental class (Class 9) and comparison scores of pretest and post-test of two classes. The author also conducted questionnaire, classroom observation and teachers’ interview and analyzed the accumulated data.Through analyzing the data, the author concluded that cooperative learning can improve the efficiency of English learning and teaching. Meanwhile, the author listed several existing problems in the implementation of cooperative learning and give some practical suggestions. Due to the limited time and the lack of theoretical basis, this thesis has some limitations. The author also puts forward some suggestions for further research, for example, when analyzing the statistics, it is more convincible if some professional calculation instruments are used; the time of experiment should be lengthened, and the author could choose more schools and students to be the research subjects and so on.