Abstract

The 2011 National English Curriculum (NEC) points out that the English language learning has great effects on shaping comprehensive personalities, cultivating the cross-cultural awareness and facilitating intelligence development of the teenagers. It puts a great emphasis on the tasks of English course: formulating students’ positive learning habits and strategies; developing the self-teaching ability, the cooperative spirit and the language proficiency. As one of the basic language skills, writing is an effective way to express and conveying information, from which one’s language proficiency can be seen. Nevertheless, for quite a long time, English writing has been the weakest unit in English teaching. It is urgent to change the teacher-oriented and text book-centered situation and reform the traditional writing teaching.

With the purpose of advancing the writing teaching, the cooperative learning is widely advocated and practiced in recent years. It benefits for the improvement of students’ communicative ability and the awareness of innovation and equality. However, in reality, the application of CL in writing teaching is not as perfect as imagine. With the help of the theories on cooperative learning, the author made an experiment to examine the effect of applying cooperative learning into writing teaching and proved the effectiveness of cooperative learning on promoting students writing proficiency. 

In future, the author will keep on learning the theories of cooperative learning and devote more efforts to exploring the effective strategies and methods of cooperative learning. The author sincerely wishes that cooperative learning can serve the writing teaching in a better way. 

Key words: Cooperative learning; English writing teaching; Empirical study

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction-1

1.1 Background of the Study-1

1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study-2

1.3 Overall structure of the Thesis-2

Chapter Two Literature Review-3

2.1 Theoretical Bases of Cooperative Learning-3

2.1.1 Theories of Social Interdependence-3

2.1.2 Motivational Theory-4

2.2 Overview of Cooperative Learning-5

2.2.1 Definition of Cooperative Learning-5

2.2.2 Development of Cooperative Learning-6

2.2.3 Elements of Cooperative Learning-6

2.3 Related Studies on Cooperative Learning-8

2.3.1 Related Studies on Cooperative Learning abroad-8

2.3.2 Related studies on Cooperative Learning at Home-9

Chapter Three Research Methodology-10

3.1 Participants-10

3.2 Instruments-10

3.2.1 Tests-10

3.2.2 Questionnaires-10

3.2.3 Interviews-11

3.3 Experiment Design-11

3.3.1 Preparation-11

3.3.2 Research Procedures-13

Chapter Four Data Collection and Analysis-16

4.1 Analysis of Questionnaires-16

4.1.1 Analysis of QuestionnaireⅠ-16

4.1.2 Analysis of QuestionnaireⅡ-17

4.2 Analysis of Pre-test and Post-test-18

4.3 Analysis of Interviews-19

Chapter Five Conclusion-22

5.1 Major Findings-22

5.2 Pedagogical Applications-22

5.3 Limitations of the Research-23

5.4 Recommendations for Future Research-23

References-25

Appendices-27

Appendix I Writing Tests-27

Appendix II Questionnaires-28