4.1.1 Analysis of the Mid-test14
4.1.2 Analysis of the Post-test14
4.2 Analysis of the Questionnaire.15
4.3 Discussion.16
Chapter Five Conclusion.18
5.1 Major findings.18
5.2 Pedagogical Implications18
5.3 Limitations of the study19
References20
Appendix22
Analysis on the Application of Cooperative Learning in English Writing in Secondary School
Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Motivation for the study
Writing was born in need of communication and is one of the most important methods, with which people can send messages and express their feelings and thoughts. Nowadays, the English writing is playing an increasingly important role in our daily life and is considered as an essential skill in job hunting by many big companies.
In China, more and more teachers and English learners have attached importance to the English writing. Most schools have set up English writing course. However, the most commonly means used in English writing class is teacher-centered, instruction-based teaching method which contains the presentation of writing theories, practice and feedback on the finished products. Teachers put more emphasis on correcting students’ word spelling, grammar mistakes, but seldom care about the cultivation of students' creativity and organization ability during the writing process. During the writing process, there is no immediate reflection and evaluation from teachers as well as clear criteria for "good" or "bad" performance of the students, except lots of how-to instructions. As a result, English writing is still a weak area in language learning for students. Most students have little interest in and low motivation to English writing because they think English writing is boring, time-consuming and difficult. During my teaching process, I found many students even have no idea of what to write when they were offered a writing topic. There were many simple mistakes, such as word spelling, grammar mistakes, as well as problems in text organization, though all these are the focal points in our English writing class. Most of the students think the most difficult part in English learning is writing and they always feel anxious and thwarted in writing.
Cooperative learning is a student-oriented learning method, whose essence is the cooperation and interaction among learners. Besides, cooperative learning stresses the importance of mutual respect and put emphasis on how to stimulate students’ interest as well as prompt their initiative and motivation.
Therefore, through this study, I want to find a way to change the present poor situation of English writing, so that students can improve their writing proficiency and teachers can improve their working efficiency.
1.2 Overall Structure
The research includes 5 chapters. Chapter One briefly introduces the motivation of this study. Although teachers and students have spent a lot of time and energy on writing, it is still a weak point in English teaching. To deal with this problem, this essay intends to make a comparative study between cooperative learning method and traditional teaching method to seek some suggestions for English writing education. Chapter Two, reviews some existing literature of research on cooperative learning, includes the definition of cooperative learning and some previous studies on the implementation of cooperative learning in writing abroad and in China as well as the importance and necessity of the study. Chapter Three mainly talks about the methodology used in this research. Chapter Four includes the results of pre-test, mid-test and post-test as well as the analysis of each result. Chapter 5 is the conclusion part.
Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Definition of Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning first emerged in America in the early 1970s and later has been considered as one of the most creative and effective teaching theories and strategies all around the world. Here are several main definitions of cooperative learning: 浅析合作学习在中学英语写作中的应用(2):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_27727.html