An Action Research Of Applying Cooperative Learning In Teaching English Writing For Junior High School Students

Writing is an important skill in learning English.What's more,in international communication and cooperation,it plays a more and more vital part.However,in the actual practice,there are lots of problems in the teaching of English writing in the Chinese high schools.For many students,they are reluctant to do English writing both in and after class.Some of them write the compositions carelessly or just copy others'.The students often repeat the mistakes they make in the process of their English writing and most students' English writing scores are rather low.In order to find out the real causes of these problems,the author designed a questionnaire and discovered that the main reasons are that students can not get useful information from the feedback of teaching and the teaching methods of the teacher which can not stimulate students' interest in English writing.A great many students not only show no interest in English writing,but are rather passive facing the task of writing.With the purpose of changing the students' passively receptive way of learning in class,the author conducts an action research by applying the cooperative learning to English writing class in the junior high school to improve the effect of classroom teaching.Under the guidance of the group dynamics theory,social interdependence theory and developmental theory,the author begins with finding the causes of the problems students have and make use of the advantages of the process approach aiming to prove that it ismore effective to apply the cooperative learning in the teaching of English writing than the traditional teaching method.The research subjects are 52 students the author of the thesis has taught in a junior high school in Fengzhen of Inner Mongolia.The research has lasted for about one semester.Based on the theoretical basis above,two questions are put forward in the research.1.Can the cooperative learning activities increase the students' interest and attitudes in English writing?2.Can cooperative learning activities improve the students' English writing performance?Based on the open research procedure from Wang Qiang,the author does the action research following the five steps below according to the real situation of the students:1.Planning the action research,2.Implementing the action research,3.Observing and data collecting,4.Reflecting,5.Preparing for the second round of the action research by analyzing and revising the plans.The data collected includes two questionnaires and two writing scores of the unified examination organized by educational bureau in Fengzhen.By analyzing the data collected from the questionnaires,it is found as follows:1.Cooperative learning greatly improves students' attitudes to English writing and improves their interest.2.Cooperative learning improves students' English writing performance.Through the application of cooperative writing and collecting relevant data,this study shows that in English writing teaching in junior high school,the implementation of cooperative writing is feasible and effective,which improves the student's' interest,attitudes and scores in writing.The author also benefits a lot in the process of discovering,analyzing and solving the problems the author encounters in the practical teaching.