An Empirical Research Of Group Cooperative Learning In Senior High School Exercise Classes

Exercise class is one of the important class types in senior high school English teaching.It is not only a process for students to consolidate and deepen the knowledge they have learned in their new lesson,but also a good chance to improve their language knowledge level,language competence and critical thinking ability.But,for such a long time,senior high school English exercise class always follows the traditional teaching mode,where the teachers give answers to each question and the students accept knowledge passively,resulting in the dreary classroom atmosphere.Therefore,in this kind of cramming exercise class model,students cannot really get involved into the classroom and the learning efficiency is low.Over the long time,the students' interest in learning English will be waning and certain job burnout occurs without student's response in teachers' teaching.What's worse,students can not get proper training in the exercise class and their language knowledge reserves and ability can not get improved.Therefore,the method “group cooperative learning”,which takes the students as the center,forms in small groups and gives priority to hold the language practice activities,will be able to compensate for the insufficiencies of teaching in senior high school English practice class,providing strong support for the comprehensive development of cooperative learning.In this paper,the study is based on the cooperative learning theory.Having studied the concept,theoretical basis and theoretical significance of cooperative learning and having combined the study with actual situation of the Senior High School English exercise class teaching,the author further clarified the significance of cooperative learning in exercise class.The author carried out the teaching experiment for eight weeks(from September 2016 to November 2016)in Senior High School attached to Shandong Normal University and did an empirical research of the application of cooperative learning in senior high English exercise class.In order to do this empirical research,the author chose two classes.The cooperative approach is used in the experimental class(EC),while the traditional teaching methods are still used in control class(CC).Each lesson is 40 minutes,and both of them are monitoredtogether.Firstly,the author made a quantitative analysis on the questionnaire data obtained from the EC students,trying to find out the influence that cooperative learning has made on student's study enthusiasm in the English exercise classes.Then,using the software SPSS.22.0,the author made a quantitative analysis on the students' test scores before and after the experiment,trying to obtain the influence that cooperative learning has made on students' scores.Finally,the author made the face-to-face interviews.All the responses to the interview came from the students in EC.By the qualitative analysis of the responses,we have got the students' views on cooperative learning.After eight weeks experiment,the result shows that employing cooperative learning in English exercise class can provide the students with a more relaxed and active classroom atmosphere and the students' interest and enthusiasm in learning English will be improved accordingly.The students who love learning English with a good score gradually change their attitudes towards English exercise class,paying more attention to the consolidation function of the exercise class and making the best of their advantages.The students who enjoy learning English but failed the exam will no longer be depressed and firm the confidence of learning English well.The students who hate learning English begin to be absorbed into the classroom slowly,making progress gradually with the help of their team members.Through the practice of cooperative learning in the exercise classes,the students make great progress in the examination and get a higher score than before.Accordingly,the students' psychological quality and social skills are also significantly strengthened.In conclusion,it is effective to adopt the cooperative learning in the English exercise class.Since this experiment is still in the initial exploratory stage,there exists certain limitations.Therefore,the author hopes that more and more front-line teachers' and researchers' endeavor to do further research so that more effective methods will be discovered for English exercise teaching in the future.