The fourth part is the analysis of the experiments carried out in light with questionnaire and students’ comments on cooperative learning, from which the appropriateness of cooperative learning in college learning is apparently seen.
The fifth part lists some existent problems and misunderstandings concerning cooperative learning. Although cooperative learning has been adopted to application to college English teaching for some time, it is still necessary to make further known what cooperative learning is in practice by clarifying misunderstandings concerning it. This part proposes some appropriate suggestions to avoid making mistakes in practicing the principle of cooperative learning. As a matter of fact, in order to achieve the significant improvements in teaching and learning, we must concentrate on the manner in which instruction is conducted, rather than the contents of the curriculum only. Fortunately, however, this paper will be significantly beneficial to both the teachers and students by providing examples.
1 General review of cooperative learning
Cooperative Learning, as a creative and actual effective teaching theory and strategic learning method, is widely applied by many countries in the world in the past three decades. There has been a growing internationally wide recognition of its popularity with its positive effects on student achievements gradually reached through a series of typical experiments.
1. 1 A brief history of cooperative learning
Cooperative learning first rose in USA during the late 60’s and early 70’s, and it soon attained universal acceptance, becoming a teaching theory and strategy by mid 80’s[4].Two reasons propelled its birth. One is the rise of civil anti-racial discrimination movement, when cooperative learning advocates argued that it was extremely urgent to improve the relationship between students of different races in classrooms and schools. The best way to solve it was not to add some content in the textbooks but to set up a positive and harmonious relationship among students so that the misunderstanding, discrimination and indifference could be removed effectively. The other is the traditional classroom reform. The fact that the whole-class instruction had been employed in any kind of classroom for long for its proven advantages that had been neglecting individual difference on the agenda. Therefore, cooperative-learning advocates argued that classroom team study could promote teaching quality so that teacher-centered thinking should be removed and student-centered as well as teacher-student interactive communication be encouraged.
Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy, which embodies the idea of multicultural education: the pursuit of independence, competition, and cooperation in the teaching of three teaching mode in the equilibrium distribution system, with a view to achieving equality in education; the teaching efficiency of the strategy has attracted educational experts’ attention, in return that the teaching strategy gains its popularity in several decades [4].
China’s basic education has undergone great changes in recent years, with the philosophy that “students for the main part, activity for the center, the comprehensive development of people for guidance and the life-long learning for the goal.”[5] This phenomenon can be explained by two factors. One is that international transactions are steadily on the rise, which requires oral proficiency in the English language with the development of China and the globalization of the world. The other is that the youth generation is more independent and individualized. They grow unsatisfied with being fed by language teachers in the traditional way. Some college teachers still adopt the traditional grammar-translation method. Teaching is conducted in the sequence of pronunciation, words, grammar and translation. Language skills, such as listening, speaking, reading and writing are taught segmentally instead of in contexts or discourses. The newly-adopted principle of cooperative learning needs to be applied as widely as possible by most college English teachers.
1. 2 Definition of cooperative learning
Cooperative learning has several decades’ history in both theory and practice. However, so far linguistics still cannot make up with a concise and an accurate definition. Joann Crandall(1999) summarizes: “Cooperative learning requires social interaction and negotiation of meaning among heterogeneous group mates engaged in tasks in which all group mates have both something to contribute to and learn from the other members.”[3] To put it more concretely, cooperative learning approach defines the class as heterogeneous groups. The class is organized in groups of five or six students to fulfill a learning task cooperatively. The learning task is based on interaction and reciprocal interdependence among the members of group and requires mutual help. In this educational approach, students and teachers are in a state of dynamic cooperation and together build up an intimate learning and social atmosphere in the classroom. Thus both teachers and students joined are exerting efforts to make way for solution [6].
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