A Study On Effect Of Cooperative Learning On Students' Oral English In High Schools

Cooperative learning has been widely used in teaching and learning since 1980 s.It has been considered as one of the most important and useful teaching method and practice in western countries.Is it appropriate for our high school students?The present study tried to use cooperative learning in improving senior school students' oral English.Chinese senior high school students have learned English for about six years.They have basic reading,writing and listening skills,but they are poor in oral English.In order to find how to improve senior high school students' oral English,the present research used cooperative learning in English class.The present study aimed to address the following three research questions:1)What are students' attitudes towards cooperative learning?2)Is there any significant difference in students' oral English between the experimental class and the control class?3)Is there any significant difference in students' English achievement between the experimental class and the control class?The experiment was carried out in a middle school in Jiangxi province for a semester.Two natural classes participated in the research.There were 45 students in each class.Class1 was the control class and Class 2 was the experimental class.The teacher used traditional teaching method in teaching Class 1,and cooperative learning approach in teaching Class 2.To solve research question 1,a questionnaire about high school students attitude towards cooperative learning was given to the experimental class at the end of the semester.The mean value and the total value of all the items were presented by Descriptive Statistics of SPSS 20.0.The total mean of the items is 4.14,which means students' attitude towards cooperative learning is active and positive.In order to solve research question 2,an oral test was used to mark students' oral English level in both of the two classes at the end of the semester.The research used the College Entrance Oral Examination of Jiangxi as the oral testing paper.Three qualified teachers joined in testing and scoring the students' oral English level.The College entrance English oral examination's score standard was used in the test to keep the validity of scoring.After collecting the oral English scores,the author put it into SPSS 20.0 for the analysis.The average score was compared between the control class and the experimental class.We set the significant level at p<.01.The result of the oral test(p=.049)showed that there was not any difference in students' oralEnglish between the experimental class and the control class,but we should be cautious in explaining the value.There is a tendency for students in the experimental class to improve their oral English level through the using of cooperative learning.In order to solve research question 3,two tests in the school were used as the statistics of the research.The statistics of the first test in the school was used as the pre-test.The final test in the school was the post-test.The average score was compared with the treatment of Independent Sample T-test of SPSS 20.0.We set the significant level at p<.01.The result of pre-test(p=0.032)showed that there wasn't significant difference in students' academic achievement between the control class and the experimental class.The result of the post-test(p=.000)showed that students' English achievement was improved after a semester's cooperative learning.Based on the findings,some implications are proposed to develop cooperative learning and improve senior high school students' oral English.