English Cooperative Learning Mode in a Rural Junior High School in China

Abstract

Cooperative learning is one of the most recognized and fruitful research areas in modern education practice. It has been widely used in many countries as an effective teaching strategy to improve class efficiency and students’ comprehensive language ability since the 1990’s. This paper takes JA Junior High School, a rural junior high school in Nantong, China, as a case to explore its English cooperative learning mode. A questionnaire was designed based on nine factors namely learning expectation, learning interest, learning initiative, emotional experience, cooperative awareness, cooperative ability, learning effectiveness, learning evaluation and English usage level. The purpose is to try to find whether gender, grade and academic achievements have an effect on English cooperative learning. 515 valid questionnaires were collected and analyzed by t-test and One-way ANOVA. After analysis, it turned out that these three factors have an impact on the effectiveness of English cooperative learning. The results showed that the differences of gender, grade and academic achievements should be taken into consideration in accordance with the characteristics of rural middle school in constructing the English cooperative learning mode.