An Empirical Study Of The Application Of Cooperative Learning To English Verb Teaching In Senior High Schools

The thesis presents an empirical study of the application of cooperative learning to English verb teaching in senior high schools.Vocabulary teaching plays a crucial role in language acquisition of students.However,many English teachers in China adopt traditional and inappropriate methods in vocabulary teaching.The researcher selects the research topic based on three factors.Firstly,many researches on the application of cooperative learning to English teaching are done from the angle of reading and writing.Secondly,it is not easy to research on all kinds of vocabulary,studying on English verbs seems more possible for the researcher.Thirdly,English verb teaching plays a very small part in terms of research perspectives before this thesis.Under the guidance of cognitive developmental theory and constructive learning theory,the study attempts to find the answers of two research questions:(1)Compared with traditional vocabulary teaching methods,what is the impact of cooperative learning on students' memory effects of English verbs?(2)What is the impact of cooperative learning on students' acquisition of depth of English verb knowledge?This empirical study selected two parallel classes in Grade Two of a Senior High School in Changde city.In the experimental class,the researcher applied cooperative learning to instruct English verb teaching,while the control class used traditional methods.This study lasted for 3 months,and the research data were collected from pretests,classroom observation,post-tests,delayed post-test and interview.The data were analyzed by SPSS23.0.The findings from the empirical research can be summarized as following:(1)Compared with traditional vocabulary teaching methods,cooperative learning improved students' memory effects of English verbs.The experimental class outperformed the control class not only in the post-test but also in the delayed post-test.(2)Cooperative learning improved students' acquisition of depth of English verb knowledge.The experimental class had better acquisition of depth of English verb knowledge than the control class.Furthermore,cooperative learning improved the meaning,the grammatical use,the collocation and the function aspects of depth of English verb knowledge.The study has indicated that using cooperative learning to guide English verb teaching is both feasible and effective.Because of the limitation of time and place,there are three main limitations in terms of the sample size,the experimental duration and the research instrument.To seek for a more precise conclusion,the future researches should last longer,cover a larger sample size and add more kinds of research instruments.