With the purpose of prompting the learning efficiency and fostering the consciousness of cooperation in learning process, countless scholars make their efforts to explore effective Cooperative Learning strategies and build up systematical theories on it。 In 1970s, the term Cooperative Learning (shortened as CL) was firstly raised in American。 In the following decades, a great many of pedagogical theories based on CL were gradually brought forth and came into being and they were notably beneficial for innovating the traditional English teaching methodology。 On the theoretical basis of the social interdependence and motivation, CL proposes to facilitate the interaction and cooperation among students and help them to foster the self-regulated learning awareness。 In early 1990s, CL was introduced to China and received overwhelming interests from scholars in education for the reason that it correctly catered for the idea of developing quality-oriented education in the whole nation。 Numerous educators are engaged themselves in the theoretical studies of CL and they make lots of contributions to the work of applying CL into practice in Chinese classroom teaching。

1。2 Purpose and Significance of the Study

Any language can’t do without the following fundamental skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing。 In our daily lives, writing occupies a particular place of conveying messages, getting things done, forming or maintaining social relationships (王蔷 2006)。 As for the ELT, writing is seen as a crucial part in language learning。 In writing process, students not only re-consolidate what they have learnt in class, but also gradually form the awareness of how the language works better and unconsciously get more familiar with some knowledge of linguistics。 

In the present teaching approach, which is also called traditional teaching approach, teachers have laid too much importance on the writing products and neglected the learning process (王琦 2002:115)。 On the basis of a research done by Dai Junrong, students’ rate of satisfaction towards writing teaching was less than 35％ 。 Several causes may be taken into account for the results。 On one hand, teachers’ awareness of writing teaching and their self-written capacity is weak; then the design of exams and the arrangement of the learning materials in the text books fail to emphasize the importance of writing; the last but not the least, the students are unambiguous on for what is the purpose of their learning to write。 With the expectation of seeking for the resolutions to these issues, the author finds that the attempt of CL in Xixi Middle School is a practical example for motivating students and developing their learning strategies。 However, the practice of CL in English writing teaching doesn’t go along well as expectation。 So the author manages to do a research on how to prompt the application of CL in English teaching especially for writing part in the middle schools。 With the intention of the author, the thesis is designed to focus on the following questions:   

1。 Does CL have any effects on improving students’ writing? If yes, is it positive or negative? 

2。 How do teachers apply CL effectively to English writing teaching?

3。 What is the significance of applying CL to the English writing teaching?

1。3 Overall structure of the Thesis

The thesis is made up of five chapters。 The first chapter is an introduction part which presents the background and significance of the study, moreover, the overall structure of the thesis。 Chapter two devotes to the literature review of CL which includes three sections。 The theoretical bases, the overview of CL and the studies related to CL abroad and at home are described in detail。 In chapter three, the author illustrates the research methodology, which involves the participants, the instruments used and the experiment design。 Chapter four concentrates on the data collection and analysis of the results of two tests, questionnaires and interviews。 The last part, conclusion, makes a summary of the main findings of the research, pedagogical applications, the limitation of experiment and the recommendations for the further study。论文网