An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Cooperative Learning On Senior High School Students' English Writing Strategy

English writing is not only a cognitive activity but also an emotional activity.It is a comprehensive activity which directly reflects students' linguistic competence and indirectly represents their ability of communication and application.However,due to the long-term examoriented education,English writing teaching is far from being satisfactory.Therefore,English Curriculum Standards for Senior High School(2017)makes comprehensive requirements for English writing teaching by stating that English teachers should stress practical application of students' writing,improve their writing strategies,including some strategies directly related to writing knowledge,and others like social and affective strategies indirectly related with English writing.Different from other teaching methods,Cooperative Learning is mainly based on students' interaction,and it can improve students' dominant position in the classroom,which helps to create a relaxed learning atmosphere and increase opportunities for them to learn from each other.However,researches about this method mostly involve the whole teaching effect of Cooperative Learning.In order to explore effective ways to improve English writing strategies,this experimental study,based on the Socio-constructivism and the theory of “the zone of proximal development”(ZPD),investigated the effects of Cooperative Learning on senior high school students' English writing strategies and writing proficiency.With 76 students from two parallel classes in a senior high school as the research subjects,Cooperative Learning teaching mode was adopted in the experimental class,whereas traditional teaching approach was applied in the control class.The whole study,which lasted 16 weeks,exploited three research instruments: Questionnaire of English Writing Strategy,writing tests and interview in order to investigate: the effect of Cooperative Learning on senior high school students' writing strategies;the effect of Cooperative Learning on writing strategies of high school students with different writing proficiency and the impact of Cooperative Learning on senior high school students' writing proficiency.All the data collected from a pre-test,a post-test,a questionnaire and an interview were analyzed by SPSS 21.0.Major findings are: firstly,Cooperative Learning has positive effects on senior high school students' writing strategies including students' memory strategies,cognitive strategies and compensation strategies.In addition,this teaching mode can effectively improve the frequency of students' use of meta-cognitive strategies and affective strategies and social strategies as well.Furthermore,compared with the situation of high-achievers,the lowachievers gain much more promotion in terms of English writing strategy which indicates Cooperative Learning is more effective for low-achievers' writing strategies.Finally,it is also proved that compared with the traditional writing teaching,the teaching mode of group cooperation can effectively promote senior high school students' writing proficiency.On the basis of these research findings,this study provides more references for the research of Cooperative Learning theory in English writing and some suggestions for the future English writing teaching in senior high schools.