中学英语教学中的合作学习 --毕业论文.doc

【标题】中学英语教学中的合作学习 【作者】周 巧 【关键词】合作学习；中学英语教学；小组活动 【指导老师】王露 李芬芳 【专业】英语 【正文】I. IntroductionCooperative learning is first advocated and carried out by famous American educator David Koonts. It became a creative and effective teaching theory and strategy in 1970s and 1980s. The strategy of cooperative learning was developed as a means to reduce competition in American schools, which James Coleman(1959) identified as a negative component of the education system. It is a structured, systematic instructional strategy in which small groups work together toward a common goal. Cooperation, is working together to accomplish shared goals.1 Within cooperative activities individuals seek outcomes that are beneficial to themselves and beneficial to all other group members. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each others learning. The idea is simple. Class members are organized into small groups after receiving instruction from the teacher. They then work through the assignment until all group members successfully understand and complete it. Cooperative efforts result in participants striving benefit so that all group members gain from each others efforts(your success benefits me and my success benefits you), recognizing that all group members share a common fate(we all sink or swim together here), knowing that ones colleagues(we can not do it without you), and feeling proud and jointly celebrating when a group member is recognized for achievement(we all congratulate you on your accomplishment!).2With the development of the society and economy in China, the second round education reform has set an even higher demand as well, which makes teaching more challenging. Teachers have to focus their attention not only on teaching materials, but also on efficiency of teaching. More and more teachers are trying to use effective teaching approaches in their classroom so as to find better ideas for meeting these challenges. Therefore, cooperative learning approach is widely adopted in Chinese middle schools.In the traditional approach to English teaching, most class time is spent with the teachers instructing and the students watching, listening and writing. Students work individually on assignments and cooperation is discouraged. Such teacher-centered instruction methods have repeatedly been found inferior to instruction that involve cooperative learning, in which students work in groups on problems under conditions that are sure both positive interdependence and individual accountability.Different from the traditional teacher-centered instruction in which teachers address the whole class at the same time and the interaction between the instructor and the students are rare,“Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy involving students participation in small group learning activities that promote positive interaction.”3 Students are encouraged to solve problems, answer questions of their own, discuss, explain, debate or brainstorm in their teams during class. Team members learn to cooperate and work together toward a common goal.II. Literature ReviewA. The Connotation of Cooperative LearningAccording to the study of cooperative learning experts all over the world, it involves following points:4(1) Cooperative learning, is a teaching activity which takes the group activities as the main body.(2) Cooperative learning, is a mutual assistance activity of companion.(3) Cooperative learning, is a goal-oriented activity.(4) Cooperative learning, is taking the overall performance of each groups achieves as the reward basis.(5) Cooperative learnings learning assignment and teaching procedure, assigned and controlled by teachers.5To sum up, cooperative learning is a learning strategy as well as a means of classroom orgnization, in which students learn in small groups to achieve the common goals and get shared reward. In order to maximize their achivement, group members often help each other and contribute their most to the group.B. The Key Elements of Cooperative LearningAll the cooperative learning approaches share the following basic elements: positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, individual and and group accountability, interpersonal and small group skills and group processing.(Johnson& Johnson, 1993) 6The first element is positive interdependence. It is a kind of feeling that all group members are linked together. One can not succeed without the success of others. Thus, in order to achieve the group goal, group members have to help each other and contributes ones own efforts to the group. Positive interdependence helps students see that their work can benefit others and others work can benefit them. This is the essential element of cooperative learning.The second element of cooperative learning is face-to-face interaction. It means that the fundamental form of cooperative learning is group work, in which students communicate and interact with each other. They collect materials and solve problems to accomplish tasks together. By sharing resources, providing helping, supporting and encouraging, they achieve their goals. The interactive activities include explaining how to solve problems, teaching academic knowledge, checking understanding, discussing and changing concepts and ideas being learned.The third element of cooperative learning is individual accountability. It means that in order to achieve the group goal, each member should be clear what his responsibility is. Individual accountability exists when the performance of each individual is assessed and the results are given back to the group. It ensures that group members cannot be free riders. Each should contribute his share. Only in this way can each member maximize his learning and benefit from cooperative learning.The fourth element of cooperative learning is interpersonal and small group skills. Cooperative learning is a kind of self-learning conducted in the form of group work. Students need to interact with each other, so interpersonal and small group skills are need. However just putting students together and telling them to cooperate can not guarantee what they can do as the teachers expects. So the social skills must be taught to the students just as purposefully and precisely as academic skills. Leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict-management skills empower students to manage both teamwork and taskwork successfully. Since cooperation and conflict are inherently related, the procedures and skills for managing conflicts constructively are especially important for the long-term success of learning groups.The fifth element of cooperative learning is group processing. It exists when group members discuss how well they are achieving their goals and maintaining effective working relationships. Groups need to describe what member actions are helpful and unhelpful and make decisions about what behaviors to continue or change. Continuous improvement of the processes of learning results from the careful analysis of how members are working together and determining how group effectiveness can be enhanced.C. The Basic Theories of Cooperative LearningThere are at least three general theoretical perspectives that have guided research on cooperative learning: social interdependence, cognitive development, and behavioral learning theory. By far the most important theory dealing with cooperation is social interdependence theory. 7Social interdependence theory came from the Gestalt psychology in early 20th century. K. Kafka as one of the founders of this theory thought that the group was a power unity in which group members interdependence could change, and the interdependence of members had its differences. K. Lewin, one of his colleagues elucidated the above viewpoints, and he considered that the essence of one group was the interdependence formed by the group members when they have the same goals.8 This essence resulted groups as a whole, and if any member or sub-group of the group had changed, it would affect the other members of the groups or other sub-groups to change; the intensive conditions in group members can trigger the incentive to complete the common goal. Lewins student M. Deutsch put forward the cooperation and competition theory from the perspective of objective structure in the end of the 1940s, defined three kinds of objective structure:(1) The cooperations objective structure: personal goal orientation efforts can help others achieve their goals.(2) Competitions objective structure: personal goal orientation can hamper others to reach a goal.(3) Personal objective structure: personal goal orientation efforts have nothing to do with others achievement to their goals. Deutschs students Johnson Brothers integrated and developed this theory and formed the social interdependence theory. This theory is that positive interdependence(cooperation) produces the promoted interaction, and group members will encourage and facilitate each others learning efforts; negative interdependence(competition) produces the opposed interaction, and group members will not encourage others learning effort and discourage them; in the absence of interdependence circumstances, there is not any interaction between individuals and each one works independently and without interference. From the perspective of social interdependence theory, the core of cooperative learning theory can be expressed by very simple words: when all the people gather together for a common goal to work, they depend on the strength of unity. Depending on each other provided the power for individuals they can:(1) mutually encourage, and be willing to do anything for the success of the group;(2) mutually aid, and strive to enable the group to be successful;(3) mutually love, because people like others to help themselves to achieve their own goals and cooperation is the best activity to increase the contacts.The cognitive development theory is largely based on the theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. Piagetians argue that during cooperative efforts participants will engage in discussions in which cognitive conflicts will occur and be resolved, and inadequate reasoning will be exposed and modified. The work of Vygotsky and related theorists is based on the premise that knowledge is social, constructed from cooperative efforts to learn, understand and solve problems. Group members exchange information and insights, discover weak points in each others reasoning strategies, correct one another, and adjust their understanding on the basis of others understanding.The behavioral learning theory focus on the group reinforcers and rewards for learning. The assumption is that actions followed extrinsic rewards are repeated. More recently, Slvin(1983)has emphasized the need for extrinsic group rewards to motivate efforts to learn in cooperative learning groups.The three theoretical perspectives have guided the development of cooperative learning and explained how the cooperative learning innovations produce their impressive results.III. The Necessity of Adopting Cooperative Learning in Middle School English TeachingA. The Present Situation in Middle School English TeachingFirst, teachers dont pay enough attention to develop students integrated English proficiency.Second, the tendency of examination-oriented teaching still exists. Many students focus on memorizing some grammar and language points from the textbook and developing necessary examination skills such as how to write a high-grade composition in class in order to pass the exams rather than develop their communicative skills and comprehensive ability.Third, Chinese teachers tend to play an“authoritative role” in the class. Students are supposed to be submissive in the classroom.Fourth, students hold competitive attitude towards learning due to college entrance exam.“To exceed others” is the message that is instilled in many students mind due to the fierce competition and the college entrance examination. This attitude is formed even when they entered the primary school. In order to get rewards or go to a good university, students have to surpass others academically.B. The Relationship Between Cooperative Learning and Middle School English TeachingTheoretically, the reforming is the core of the development of higher education. Traditional education emphasizes lopsidedly on the one-way communication between the teachers and the students, and cooperative learning not only attaches importance on the communication between the teachers and the students, but also the communication among the students, which improves the teaching effectiveness through the full mobilizing of enthusiasm of active factors in teaching process. Middle school English teaching is different from other subjects, it instructs knowledge in a language environment. There is almost no language environment for the students to practice the language, and therefore the teaching in English class is essential to the development of comprehensive language ability of the students. The traditional English teaching only attaches importance to the teaching of knowledge and ignores the training of language communicative ability of the students. Cooperative learning changes the students from the traditional passive recipients into the active participants in the teaching process, and the students can make up for their own shortages by communicating learning experiences. Therefore, the introduction of cooperative learning in middle school English teaching is very important.C. The Significance of Cooperative Learning in Middle School English TeachingThe adoption of cooperative learning in teaching incubates the change of educational thought. The students have become the main body of classroom teaching. The student-centered class has taken the place of the teacher-centered class. And the students association, their initiativeness and the good relationship between the teacher and students are protruded in English class.In addition, the adoption of cooperative learning provides a good way for the students to carry out the communicative teaching practically and effectively. In a word, cooperative learning can promote language learning from the following aspects:(1)It can let the students come into contact with real meaningful materials, and it creates negotiation communicative chances, which can make the students have learning activities on the premise of understanding language meaning.(2)It can let the students have chances to use new language items and learn language knowledge functions.(3)It can train the students communicative strategies, including how to ask a partner to clarify or prove, how to repeat or how to use some other ways to remedy the defect of their own expression, and etc.(4)Students can learn some about the other subjects through language activities.IV. Three Classifications of Cooperative Learning in Middle School English TeachingA. Knowledge Understanding Oriented Cooperative Leaning1. Solving Language DifficultiesFirst of all, it requires the students to discuss the difficult language points in self-learning process in group. After the discussion, the group reporters are responsible for reporting the unsolved questions of each group to the class in English. When a reporter is reporting, the members of other groups should pay attention to listening to and recording the questions. When the report is over, the teachers should let the students of other groups take part in group discussion for 2-3 minutes, and then ask group members to select representatives to answer in English. To ensure that every student has the opportunity to exercise, the group members must take turns to serve as representatives.2. Analyzing Text structureIn view of some referential books having detailed and extensive analysis on the literature style, theme, paraphrase and writing style, the main tasks of group activities are:(1) the external analysis on the text;(2) identifying the theme sentence of each paragraph and supporting details, convergence of the chapter and the framework of the text, and the theme related core vocabulary and core sentences. The teachers may require the students to complete the cooperative learning task in the forms of filling blanks.3. Deep Understanding to The TextIn order to develop the students good reading habits and to enhance their analyzing, and cognitive capacities, it is necessary to carry out text-deep understanding cooperative activities. Before the group activities, the teachers should choose the words which have context meaning, analogy, irony, enigmatic, exaggeration sentences and details which have extensive significance from the text for the students to discuss. The students are requested to understand the context meaning and pragmatic meaning according to the article subject, master the writing skills through the group discussion, and then grasp the viewpoint and attitude of the author.The knowledge inputs and outputs between the group members and the teachers play the essential role in knowledge understanding oriented cooperative learning method. With the assistance of referential materials, the potential learning abilities such as the inquiring of knowledge and team-learning spirit are stimulated. Many teachers change their educating role from demanding to enlightening, and the students can learn with self-consciousness, efficiency and effectiveness. In a word, knowledge supplements the teachers and becomes a new“educator”.B. Skills Oriented Cooperative Learning After the knowledge understanding oriented cooperative activities, the teachers should explain the questions on language points, and text understanding to students. When th