A Study Of The Impact Of Cooperative Learning On The Reduction Of High School Students' English Writing Anxiety

In recent years,cooperative learning and foreign language anxiety are obtaining much attention in recent researches at home and abroad.Besides,it has been proved by many researches that cooperative learning can lower students' writing anxiety and enhance students' writing achievements.It requires that teaching must be student-centered and take group activities as the basic teaching form,which enables students to develop their initiative and motivation.Cooperative learning was used in the English writing teaching class to solve the present problem existing in English writing teaching.The author designed activities such as cooperative writing and cooperative revisions in groups,which would make every student take an active part in the process of it.The study was based on Affective Filter Hypothesis and Social Interdependence Theory and addressed the four research questions:1)What is the overall situation of writing anxiety of all the students? 2)Can cooperative learning reduce the writing anxiety of high school students at different anxiety levels? 3)Can cooperative learning improve writing achievements of high school students at different anxiety levels? 4)Does the students' writing anxiety have correlation with their English writing achievement?The experiment was carried out in Lanzhou No.29 Middle School.61 students from two classes in senior two were the subjects in the study.There were 30 students in the experimental class(EC)and 31 in the control class(CC).The cooperative learning approach and the traditional approach were used to teach EC and CC respectively.The experiment lasted 18 weeks.The research instruments were writing tests and a questionnaire,Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory(SLWAI).The study obtained the following findings:1)English writing anxiety was pervasive among the subjects and they had high anxiety in their writing classes.2)The mean scores of writing anxiety in EC in the pre-test and post-test were 66.53 and 53.8;while 66.23 and 64.55 in CC.There was no significant difference between two classes in the pre-test,while in the post-test,the difference was significant.And the significant difference was also found between pre-test and post-test among students at different writing anxiety levels in EC.It proved that cooperative learning could reduce the writing anxiety of students at different anxiety levels.3)In the pre-test,the mean writing score of the students in EC was 11.9 and 12.19 in CC.After the experiment,the mean score in EC changed to 15.23,and 14 in CC.And it could be noted that before the experiment,there was no significant difference between two classes,while the difference was significant after the experiment.Furthermore,there was apparent difference among students at different anxiety levels in EC in terms of their writing achievements.This meant that cooperative learning could promote the writing achievement of students at different anxiety levels.4)There was a negative correlation between the students' English writing anxiety and writing achievement.It meant the higher the students' writing anxiety scores were,the lower their writing achievements would be.However,not everyone received a positive reward in the experiment.Some students with poor foundation could not follow the main discussion in the group because of the lack of words and sentence structures.For the introverted ones,sometimes,they were unwilling to ask help from their group members for some reasons.Therefore,how to make cooperative learning has positive effects on these students is a matter for the later researchers.