Action Research on Cooperative Learning of &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Business English Writing&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;

Ling Zhang

doi:10.11648/j.ss.20190806.15

Abstract

Business English Writing is a compulsory course for English majors in Beijing Wuzi University. It is a practical course for students to internalize what they have learned in other Business Reading courses and turn it into business English articles. So cooperative learning method is introduced in this course to help students smoothly finish the writing process. Also, cooperative learning can help students to be more actively involved in learning, increase their learning motivation, improve their self-learning and creative thinking ability, so it has been applied broadly in English Teaching. However, there is seldom study that has been done on Business English Writing from the perspective of action research. This action research focused on how to apply cooperative learning in Business English Writing courses by comparing the learning results (ideas of the composition and length of the composition) of two classes, one is implemented with cooperative learning while the other is not. The comparison revealed that students were positive to cooperative learning and obtained more writing skills by learning in cooperative groups. In the last part, this paper summarized advantages and limitations of the experiment, and provided suggestions on how to improve cooperative learning in Business English Writing course to have a better learning outcome.

Highlights

Business English Writing is a compulsory course for English majors in Beijing Wuzi University
Business English Writing is specially set up for senior students majoring in business English and this course covers typical cases in various fields of international business and it is composed of chapters such as international communication, business ethics, cultural differences, human resource management, international finance, team building and successful companies, etc
The action research that lasts one semester shows that cooperative learning method applied in the course Business English Writing can effectively improve students' writing skills

Summary

Introduction

Business English Writing is a compulsory course for English majors in Beijing Wuzi University. Business English Writing is specially set up for senior students majoring in business English and this course covers typical cases in various fields of international business and it is composed of chapters such as international communication, business ethics, cultural differences, human resource management, international finance, team building and successful companies, etc. This course is a successor course of several introductory courses such as Introduction to Business and Industry, aiming to cultivate students’ capability of using fundamental knowledge after they have learned basic knowledge related to international business English. Each unit in this course is explained in procedures as follows: supplement the basic vocabulary, introduce the case background, put forward the problem, discuss and analyze the problem in groups, and generate the text version of the problem solution

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Conclusion