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The brothers of Johnsons define cooperative learning as “the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning” (Johnson and Johnson, 1989: 38). Teachers’ main task is to create a cooperative learning environment which inspires both collaboration within team and competition between teams in language teaching. In this way, students involved in group learning may cooperate within the group while the group as a whole competes against other groups by sharing and achieving a common goal and achieving the goal by their joint efforts (Wu Dongling, 2009: 19).
The main approaches of cooperative learning include the following factors. The first one is grouping. Selecting group members is a big problem, which determines whether cooperative learning would be good or not. There are some ways of grouping. However, in college English class, there are two common ways: students select their own group members or teachers group the students directly. The second factor is the size of groups. Study groups are often formed according to the seating arrangement and different grouping forms have different group numbers. The size of each group should be determined according to the different characteristics of the classes. For instance, for a listening class, the teacher can organize students in groups of two to five students. For a writing class, a group of two or three students can be better, so their writing can be checked for each other and then be checked by the teacher. The third factor is space pision. How to pide the group space may decide how the groups act. Likewise, a proper space pision will greatly be good to learning efficiency. Members in the same group should sit closely to communicate and share in an easy way. The fourth factor is teaching plan preparation. It is no doubt that a good teaching plan is very important for every teacher. In cooperative learning class, teachers should make sure that every student in a group has at least one learning task. Then, the students can discuss and cooperate to go through the tasks. The fifth factor is task assignment. When assigning tasks, teachers should ensure the participation of all students. Some students can be required to make a summary, some responsible for the content comprehension, some responsible for the vocabulary, others to take notes, etc.
After confirming the teaching objectives, teachers have to group students properly, pide the space, prepare the teaching plan and lastly assign the tasks to the “right” student. It is very important to ensure the right task given to the right student; only in this way can we make discussion and friendly competition exist in and between groups. Therefore, cooperative learning method is characterized with scientificity, practicality and systematicness.
From the theory and practice of cooperative learning at home and abroad, according to the members involved in the cooperative learning group, cooperative learning activities can be broadly pided into five types: teacher-student cooperation, student-student cooperation, independent thinking, teacher-teacher cooperation and full cooperation. Firstly, teacher-student cooperation is a traditional classroom cooperation, characterized by being teacher-led and student-centered, which emphasizes the exchange and cooperation between teachers and students. Secondly, for traditional teaching ignores peer assistance, student-student cooperation focuses on the interaction between students and use cooperative learning to achieve teaching objectives. Thirdly, cooperative learning creates a participatory classroom atmosphere of cooperation and competition, but independent thinking of students cannot be ignored when implementing cooperative learning (Garibaldi, 1979: 145). Fourthly, teacher-teacher cooperation stresses on cooperation among teachers, including collective preparation, collaboration in classroom teaching, teaching seminars, teaching evaluation which is an important element of teacher-teacher cooperation. Fifthly, full cooperation includes cooperation between students and students, teachers and students, teachers and school administrators, school and family, school and community, general education and special education for all-round cooperation.