2.1.3 Previous studies on cooperative learning abroad and home 5

2.1.3.1 The Study on Cooperative Learning Abroad 5

2.2 Previous researches on junior oral English teaching 6

2.2.1 Oral English ability 6

2.2.2 The necessity of oral English teaching 6

2.2.3 Previous studies on oral English teaching abroad and home 7

2.2.3.1 Previous studies on oral English teaching abroad 7

2.2.3.2 Previous studies on oral English teaching at home 8

Chapter 3  Research Methodology 8

3.1 Research Questions 8

3.2 Subjects 9

3.3 Materials 9

3.4 Instruments 9

3.4.1 Classroom observation 9

3.4.2 Interviews 9

3.4.3 Questionnaires 10

Chapter 4  Research Procedure and Data Collection 11

4.1 Classroom observation 11

4.2 Interviews 11

4.3 Questionnaire 11

Chapter 5 Data Analysis 12

5.1 Analysis of classroom observation 12

5.2 Analysis of interview 13

Chapter 6 Findings and discussion 15

Chapter7 Problems and suggestions in cooperative learning 17

Chapter 8 Conclusion 18

8.1 The advantages and disadvantages of cooperative learning 18

8.1.1. The advantages of cooperative learning 18

8.1.2. The deficiencies of cooperative learning 20

Chapter 9   References 22

Appendix A    Questionnaires for teachers and students 23

The results of questionnaires. 25

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Nowadays, cooperative learning has been playing a more and more important role in the English foreign language teaching. Generally speaking, its theory has been regarded as one of the ever-increasing popular areas of theory and practice in English teaching. 

    The final goal of teaching a language is to help students to use the language in real communication. By applying the target language, we mean that the students are able to have quite fluent communications with other people in the target language. So to the junior school students, oral English ability is a necessary demand and is of  great importance for English learning.But the fact is that teachers and students pay little attention to English teaching and learning, which leads to the fact that a large number of students cannot use English well in communication even after three years’ junior English education.

However, a large number of students cannot use English for oral communication well even after three years’ junior English education. There are four reasons contribute to this result as follows: firstly, there are still many students in a class in China and the size of the class adds the difficulty of oral English teaching; Secondly, in the traditional teacher-center classroom, the interaction among students are regarded as a waste of time and resources. Thirdly, the students are lack of interpersonal skills and oral knowledge to express their ideas. What’s more, the students have learned little about cooperative learning before. Fourthly, cooperative learning such as teamwork and group work is used in classroom English teaching with low efficiency.