Cooperative learning is a pedagogical approach of great interest to some foreign language teachers in tertiary education in China. Cooperative learning is recognized as a well-known student-centered teaching method in the mainstream educational approaches ranging from kindergarten to tertiary education in other parts of the world. However, it is still not seen as an important method to use in China today. This paper briefly reviews and summarizes the major achievements as well as setbacks of FLT research in the past 60 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China. It also addresses some important issues in the history of the development and the prospect of FLT, and the career development of FL teachers in China. Moreover, it presents argumentations in the remarkable exploratory process of educational theories of FLT with Chinese characteristics. It concludes that more and more Chinese FL teachers will implement cooperative learning in their classroom activities and enrich the connotations of this approach.
This paper provides an exploration of cooperative learning(CL) in a Mediterranean European cultural setting, taking classroom teaching in the University of Málaga(UMA) as an example. An important part of the paper is on the definitions of CL, second language acquisition(SLA) and relative literature by scholars or educators home and abroad, such as historical and contemporary views of CL, its development and application in a variety of classrooms, esp. in multi-lingual settings, in UMA. It also puts much emphasis on sociocultural aspects of CL. Besides, this paper compares the application of CL with that in SWUST,one public university in Southwest China. In views of current problems and awkward situations in the application of CL, the paper argues that the qualified teachers and quality monitoring systems are the two major decisive factors that affect the achievement of CL in Spanish institutions. This paper also analyzes the main characteristics of the classroom teaching in Mediterranean European Cultural Settings. Thus, the paper suggests that CL may be one of the most efficient approaches to improving the quality of education in UMA. Finally, the paper concludes with recommendations and suggestions that Spanish institutions train more wellqualified teachers to meet the increasing demand of CL approach in multi-contextual or multi-lingual settings.
