The Application of Cooperative Learning in High School English Teaching under the New Curriculum.doc

毕业论文(设计)The Application of Cooperative Learning in High School English Teaching under the New Curriculum1.Introduction12The concept of Cooperative Learning embodied in the New Curriculum33. The significance of Cooperative Learning in high school English teaching43.1 It can help reform the traditional English teaching53.2 It can help develop students English language skills63.3 It can help foster students good qualities74. Factors related to the application of Cooperative Learning94.1 Proper student grouping94.1.1 Ways of grouping94.1.2 The size of grouping114.2 The activities of Cooperative Learning124.2.1 Activities should be designed to help to apply what students have learnt124.2.2 Activities should be designed to help to stimulate students interest in study134.3 The roles of the teacher in the activities145. Assessment of Cooperative Learning activities165.1 Process assessment175.2 Self-assessment and mutual assessment185.3 Continuous assessment196. Two examples of application of Cooperative Learning206.1 An example application of Cooperative Learning in writing206.2 An example application of Cooperative learning in reading237. The limitations existing in the application268. Conclusion28References291.IntroductionIn traditional English teaching, which is based on teacher-centered approach called “Jug-and-Mug”, teachers pour knowledge into students and focus on grammar teaching but neglect the application of students knowledge, which makes students become passive receivers of knowledge. Students can receive knowledge but can not put it into practice. Consequently, students fail to acquire overall skills in English learning. According to the Input Hypothesis (Krashen &Terrell, 1983), we can acquire a second language by being provided input. However, we need to generate output (Swain, 1985). Hence, traditional English teaching needs to be reformed to develop students competence of English learning. In this case, the introduction and application of cooperative learning can transform this teaching situation.Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping teammates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. Students work at an assignment together until all group members successfully understand and complete it. It has proved of great success in the history of educational research. Cooperative learning can reform the traditional English teaching and bring a teaching methodology based on student-centered approach. It can also make students change from passive learners to active learners. Without question, it can help students form good qualities such as cooperative spirit. With rapid economic development and globalization, cooperative or team work spirit is laid greater and greater emphasis in our society.Cooperative learning is also one of the teaching approaches strongly promoted by the New Curriculum. “State Council Decision on Reformation and Development of Basic education”(State Council, 2001)points out that “cooperative learning should be encouraged to be used in teaching to promote mutual exchange and common development between teachers and students and let teachers and students benefit each other.” 2The concept of Cooperative Learning embodied in the New CurriculumIn the history of research on cooperative learning, there are different definitions given by philosophers for it. According to Artzt&Newman(1990), cooperative learning is “an activity involving a small group of students who work together as a team to solve a problem, complete a task, and accomplish a common goal.” Davison defined it as “a task for group discussion and resolution (if possible), requiring face-to-face interaction, an atmosphere of cooperation and mutual helpfulness and individual accountability” (Davison, 1990). Cooperative learning is also regarded as “the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each others learning” (Johnson and Johnson and Smith, 1991). New Curriculum embodies a new educational concept. It highlights the student-centered education, places stress on nurturing students integrated application on language skills to reflect the objective and practicality of language learning. It also fully embodies the educational idea of “offer an individualized quality education for every student” and “for all students”.In view of the existing traditional education situation, under which the teachers leading role is over-stressed and students memorize knowledge with mechanism but not with understanding. “The New Curriculum”, mapped out by the Department of Education of the PRC (2001), initiates the learning pattern with characteristic of “active participation, exchange and cooperation and willing to explore”, as is the most critical part for the implementation of New Curriculum.Furthermore, “The Criterion of Normal Senior Middle School English Curriculum” (2003) advocates cooperative learning on the basis of students interest, lives and their active participation. It also points out that teachers are required to design learning activities to provide students with independent and cooperative learning space, so as to promote the development of students creative thought by using English to analyze and solve problems.3. The significance of Cooperative Learning in high school English teaching As regards the importance of cooperation, there are some old sayings both in Chinese and in English, such as “Many hands make light work”(众人拾柴火焰高)，“Unity of will is an impregnable stronghold”(众志成城), and” Unity is strength” “The more people, the more strength”. So, we can see that cooperation plays an important role in our lives. Furthermore, from ancient times to modern times, from the construction of the Great Wall to the exploit of the space, from the thriving and prosperous of one country to the success of individuals, the efforts of many people working together grew these fruits. Many scholars and experts have carried out both theoretical and practical research into cooperative learning and proved that cooperation is significant and effective in education. 3.1 It can help reform the traditional English teachingIn school education, we encourage individual success and urge students to get higher marks than others. Especially in high school in China, in the face of the National College Entrance Exam, students are aiming at getting high marks in it. Consequently, the English teaching in high school can be considered to be test-oriented. Hence, most of the English teaching in high school is still dominated by traditional Grammar-Translation approach.Under the Grammar-Translation approach, teachers are inclined to instill language knowledge into students, neglecting the training of students ability to put their knowledge into practice. As a result, students are easily made to become passive receivers of knowledge like containers. Many practical language activities cannot be carried out properly and effectively. In this case, many students are discouraged in English learning. They can not acquire skillful use of their English knowledge and language abilities. Even though they have a large vocabulary and memorize large number of grammatical rules, or practice a lot of exercise, they can not communicate with others fluently in English and can not gain overall language skills in English.In the techer-centred traditional English class, there are few language activities, and learning atmosphere is not active but gloomy and students can not be motivated. What is more, students just memorize the knowledge but do not know how to learn, which does not meet the approach of teaching. So, the traditional English teaching must be reformed, and the New Curriculum reform in China urges to change this education situation.The introduction of cooperative learning can reform the traditional English teaching. English class with it can be more active and lively with more activities and students participation and interaction. It can also cultivate their competence of learning independently and that of learning how to learn. An experiment, Cooperative &Practice, done by Wang Tan(2002), covered more than 100 schools in 9 provinces or citiesShandong, Guangdong, Henan, Zhejiang and so on, was proved to be successful in getting beneficial result in terms of practice and theory of cooperative learning (Net .1).3.2 It can help develop students English language skillsCooperative learning is introduced in high school to reform the traditional English teaching so as to build overall learning atmosphere of English teaching classroom. In the process of cooperative learning, students English learning skills on listening, speaking, reading and writing can be improved greatly.For instance, cooperative learning makes students exchange information, by talking with other group members or classmates and presenting their point of view. In order to make them understood and have a good presentation, they have to practice a lot to make fewer mistakes. Hence, students oral English is improved gradually and unconsciously. Then, it enhances students self-esteem which in turn motivates students to participate in the learning process (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). Whats more, when communicating with others, students exchange information, listen to other peoples opinions and share information together, they learn to gather, receive, analyze and comprehend information. In this way, the receptive, analytic and comprehensive ability can be improved.In the oral activities, students language skills especially on listening and speaking can be improved. In the writing class, students are supposed to check the writing for each other, which needs the students efficient writing skills. With the help of his group members, students can find their own shortcomings and learn better methods and techniques. Thus we can see that applying cooperative learning appropriately to teaching will do a lot good to all English learning skills of the students.3.3 It can help foster students good qualitiesCooperation is a very common act in human daily life. With rapid development and globalization, our society needs citizens who not only have strong individual abilities but also can cooperative with others. Especially in the 21st century, the world is undergoing profound changes. Cooperation plays an extraordinary role in all fields. The competition among countries is becoming fierce increasingly, and the competition is focused on the scramble for talents, whose key qualities are the ability of cooperation, innovation and practicality. According to Johnson(1985), there is much clear evidence that cooperative learning experiences promote higher achievement than students competitive or individualistic counterparts. (as cited in Lu Jiaming, 2005. 5). Cooperative learning provides beneficial chances to foster students good qualities.Firstly, cooperative learning emphasizes that studying process is not done by an individual, but too, three, five or more individuals working together. In the process of cooperative learning, the activities are assigned for the whole group but not for someone. In order to finish the task and have a wonderful job, each student should have a sense of responsibility for his or her group. Consequently, an individuals one-sideness and simplisticness would be avoided when working cooperatively and students spirit of cooperation or teamwork and the collective ideas will be cultivated.Furthermore, cooperative learning, which provides students more chances to exchange ideas and responses with their peers, will help students develop their interpersonal skills. They will exchange ideas and thought with one another so that they can be successful problem-solvers. This can be very helpful for students who have difficulty with social skills. In the course of cooperation, they learn to relate to their peers view and interact with others. Also, they learn to respect others and arrange things going smoothly.Cooperative learning can build students self-esteem. Students can find out their effective role in their group, and their advantages, especially for those who are less competent on study. For instance, when students are arranged to talk about the topic “What is your favorite sport? How do you like it?” Those timid and silent students in the past will become talkative and active. If their conduction is evaluated appropriately, they will become more self-esteem.4. Factors related to the application of Cooperative Learning4.1 Proper student grouping4.1.1 Ways of groupingIn the practice of cooperative learning, proper grouping is the prerequisite for its efficiency. The biggest problem for group work is the selection of group members (Wang Qiang, 2000: 41). So, the students should be grouped appropriately. There are some ways of grouping. However, in English classroom of high school, there are two common ways as follows:a. Students select their own group members.b. Teachers group the students.According to Wang Qiang, it is risky for students to select their own group members (2000: 41). If students are free to choose their partners or group members, which will be beyond displine. Because those who do exceedingly well in study will be very popular and those with poor academic performance will be abandoned and hurt, which does no good for the overall development of students. So in most high schools, teachers choose to arrange the group themselves.As for arranging group members, most cooperative learning experts recommend that students should usually work in heterogeneous (mixed) group, “whose primary purpose is to allow members to give each other the support, help, encouragement, and assistance each needs to succeed academically”(Net 1).Cooperative learning is defined as a teaching arrangement in which small heterogeneous groups of students work together to achieve a common goal. Therefore, in high school, with regard to the successful implementation of cooperative learning, cooperative groups should be typically heterogeneous group, which means that the groups in which students do cooperative learning tasks are mixed on one or more of a number of variables including sex, ethnicity, social class, religion, personality, age, language proficiency and diligence(Net. 2). In order to have proper grouping in cooperative learning, teachers should make conscious decisions about which students should work together, rather than leave it to the students. Many factors should be taken great notice to arrange group members, especially English language proficiency, gender and individual character.The group members should be mixed with different level of English language proficiency. So, before starting the activity, heterogeneously group the students according to academic ability in groups of three: a highly achieving student, a middle level student and a low-level academic achiever (Net. 3).The famous philosophers, Good and Brophy ever pointed out that mixing the middle-level and low-level students with high-level ones will contribute to mobilize students positive factors in classroom activities (as cited in Lin Zhao, 2006).Apart from the consideration of language proficiency, the gender and individual character should be also taken into consideration. There is an old saying goes in China, “Things will be less exhausting for female and male when they work together.”(男女搭配，干活不累). Likewise, in cooperative learning activity in classroom, it is not wise to separate girls from boys. It will be ineffective if male and female students work separately but not collaboratively. The group with members who are all introverted will be dull like a stagnant pool of water with no vitality. So the extroverted and introverted students should be integrated.4.1.2 The size of groupingStudy group are often classified according to the seating arrangement and different grouping forms have different group number. The size of each group should be adopted according to the different characteristics of the classes. For instance, for a listening class, the teacher can organize students in groups with two or five students. For a writing class, two or three students in a group can be better, so their writing can be checked for each other and then be checked by the teacher. For a speaking class, students can be 2, 3 or 4 in a group to make dialogues or perform dialogues (role-playing). In a word, the size of grouping can be random. Thus, in the process of different activities, students can find their own position in various types of groups, communicate with their peers and complete their task.The quantity of a group should not be fixed, but should be attached much attention. Piaget points out that the quality and quantity of social interaction accepted by children will pay tremendous impact on their own pace of growth and development. “Besides, the teacher should also pay attention to the group size, which we believe should be from 4 to 6 ideally”(Wang Qiang, 2000: 42).4.2 The activities of Cooperative Learning4.2.1 Activities should be designed to help to apply what students have learntIn ELT, the teacher can kindle students interest on study and arouse their enthusiasm and initiative on participating in activities, intensifying the training and practice of language to foster students logical language ability and communicative ability by means of designing activities skillfully.However, when designing activities, two points should be paid attention by the teacher. One is the activities designed to lead students to achieve t