Chapter I Introduction
1.1 Research Background
With the development of society, more and more artistic talents are in great need. As aresult, the enrollment of higher school art students enlarges. In the 1980s, the number of artstudents in senior high school is smaller comparatively. There are only a few art students ineach class. However, with the enrollment expansion force in the 1990s, independent classeshave to be organized in some school. Why do many students, especially students with lowmarks, would like to learn art? Do they really like art? Actually, most of them think it a wiseway to go to college and find a good job, so the motivation of most art students is simple. Dueto this background, most art students in senior high school always have low marks, whoseknowledge is not coherent most of whom are tired of learning. Therefore, they think it asuccessful way of learning and being admitted into college mistakenly. As a result of muchtime and energy spent in art, they usually spare less time to study .Under the system of thecollege entrance examination，examination oriented education attaches attention to the rate ofadmission into colleges at senior high school in China. So schools only place emphasis on thesubjects related to college entrance examination, while other knowledge is ignored. It can beimagined that the overall quality of students can’t be improved. As a result, their knowledge islimited and lack of knowledge in literature, philosophy, historiography and so on.
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1.2 Research Significance
For a long time, the traditional teaching leads a key role in Senior School. Because manynumbers exist in each class, traditional teaching only stresses the importance of the teacher tothe students, especially strengthens the authority of the teachers to the students, but neglectsthe mutual influence of the students. In class, the teacher would speak continuously while the students even don’t know what the teacher says and feel tired of his teaching .She/He controlsthe whole class, and teaches the whole class by cramming linguistic knowledge to students nomatter how much students can understand or digest. Students just listen to the teacherpassively and take notes; they have few opportunities to develop their skill in communicatingwith others in English, while they need to spend their large portion of time in memorizing alist of grammatical principles and a large number of new words and repeating these again andagain to get a good mark in the English examination. So many students and even the teachersthink that learning English is just for examination. Therefore, they hold the view that getting agood mark aims to enter a good college and get a good job. This way will lead to thesignificant extremes between the good and the bad. Therefore, the students will lose interestand confidence in English studies gradually .According to this situation, English classteaching is in great need of a new approach ----not only suitable for all students but beneficialfor carrying out language practicing.
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Chapter II Literature Review
2.1The Definition of Motivation
Modern psychologists define motivation like this ：“Motivation is that individual givesoff energy and impulse, guides individual behavior and points to a particular purpose andmaintain the internal state of the behavior and process. What’s more, it promotes organismactivity directly to meet the need of some internal state, which is the direct cause of behaviorand internal power. Learning motivation is to inspire the main drive of English learning and it is the drive tomaintain long and dull study process（Locke，1996）.Cardner&Lamber(1972)thinks thatlearning motivation has a different role on how students study different subjects, In addition,learning motivation can make individuals more devoted to learning and improve theindividual cognitive and maintain learning activities to improve learning .Dorney(1994)regards motivation as the will of learning the second language and the active attitude oflearning language. Paula M.Winkle (2005,Vol,9)holds the view that motivation is one of thepowerful predictions of language learning success. Hedge(2000:23)states that learningmotivation is quite important in class learning. All in all, motivation plays a positive role forthe academic performance of students, especially the English learners .
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2.2 Definition of Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is that students work together to achieve their assigned goals.Within cooperative activities, individuals seek outcomes that can be beneficial to themselvesand beneficial to all group members. The idea of learning through cooperation has a longhistory but the perfect definition of cooperative learning didn’t turn up until the 1960s and the1970s.And the cooperative learning experienced its prosperity first in America, which hasbeen widely accepted in America, Europe and Asia. Besides, it is used at all levels in all subjects. Many educators and experts contributed a lot to the development of cooperativelearning. It is based on many different kinds of theoretical basis .As a result, theunderstanding of cooperative learning obviously differs from expert to expert. Many scholarsproposed their own definitions. (Zheng Jingzhou , 2005) .The inventor of TAI, ProfessorJohnsons gives a statement that cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groupsso that students work together to maximize each other’s learning. As the inventor of TGT andSTAD ,Professor Slavin states, cooperative learning is a class technique ,in which studentslearn in groups .They help each other to master the given materials. And they are awardedaccording to their group achievement and proficiency. In Professor Sharan’s opinion,cooperative learning is actually a genetic term, which refers to many methods of organizingand conducting classroom instructions. The cooperation among students is a basic feature ofthese methods. And the cooperation is carried out through activities .The group is formed bystudents 4 to 5.
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Chapter III Research Methods and Design....... 17
3.1 Research Purpose .... 17
3.2 Research Methods ........ 17
3.3 Research Subjects.... 18
3.4 Teaching Mterials ....... 18
3.5 Requirements...... 19
3.6 Research Design...... 20
3.6.1Questionnaires....... 20
3.6.2 Interview..... 21
3.6.3 Pre/Post-test of English Paper ..... 23
3.7Implementation....... ...... 24
Chapter IV Results and Discussions....... 32
4.1 Analysis of Questionnaires ........ 32
4.2Analysis of Interviews........ 36
4.3 Comparative Results from English Test ....... 37
Chapter V Conclusions.... 39
5.1Major Findings .....39
5.2Implications.... 40
5.3Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research ...... 42
Chapter IV Results and Discussions
4.1 Analysis of Questionnaires
According to the datas of questionnaires and interviews, qualitative analysis was got. Theresults show that students’ motivation, interests, learning strategies are related withcooperative learning closely. Cooperative learning can motivate students’ interest in Englishlearning, which leads to improving students’ English scores. According to the result of the questionnaire, the following results are got. Question 1 and3 show that most of the classroom teaching is of a traditional one and we can find fromQuestion 7 that most art students are nervous with a portion of 64.32, which does no good toEnglish learning. We can find from Question 4, 5, 10 that students' performance is not veryactive, and many students are unwilling to join in the classroom discussion. And question 10shows that many students (with a portion of 72.08) have a passive attitude on English learningin class. Questionnaire I shows that the reason for passive learning and reluctant involvementin class learning is that most students don't like the classroom atmosphere (suggested by question6, 7).
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Conclusion
This research mainly tries to prove whether CL is an effective way of improving artstudents' motivation and English learning scores. According to the analysis of the data of thisresearch, there are some findings:CL is an effective teaching method, which can motivate art students' interest in Englishlearning in a senior high school. Through the questionnaire and the interview, the author findsthat CL creates an encouraging learning environment in English class, which can makeEnglish class more enjoyable, interesting, and lively .Students in a learning group cooperateeach other, depend on each other and encourage each other positively in the process of CL.This offered them quite new experiences and feelings of learning. For students at senior highschool, they desire to succeed and to project a good image in front of their classmates and CLjust offers them the chance(GuoFuna，2011). The researcher finds that the situation ofsleeping in English class has obviously decreased among students in the experimental class.Many a student participated in group activities. All in all, the phenomenon came into beingthat students in the experimental class have become more and more active and interested inEnglish learning.
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Reference (omitted)
