1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study研究的目的和意义
Under the circumstances of the rapid development of science and technologyand the arrival of the information era, the fixture society will be increasingly orientedtowards a fact whether one is a team-player，whether one can express himselClierselfeffectively，and whether one can summarize and absorb other people's opinions.Cooperation, the consciousness and capability of which is vital for the survival anddevelopment of a modem person, has become a common norm in performing a task.Therefore, arousing and nurturing students' awareness of cooperation and teamworkis of critical significance. Obviously, for college students, the main battlefield ofeducation— the classroom teaching plays a key role.Three goal structures such as cooperative, competitive and individualistic onesare in existence in classroom teaching, among which competitive goal structure iswidely adopted, stressing interpersonal competition. The success of one studentmeans the failure of others, which leads to the lack of communication, repulsiontowards cooperation and mutual assistance.Examining the English classroom teaching nationwide, the author finds thatwith the deepening educational reform, the teaching model has undergonetremendous changes，and concern has been shown on many dynamic factors,including interaction between teachers and students, the relationship between studentsand teaching materials, in-depth study of the teaching materials and so on. However,little attention has been paid to the effect of cooperation between students inpromoting common progress. Hence, with increasing opportunities for interaction, intoday's classes, students are not purely "quiet listening". There are interactions inclass，but the interaction is mainly confined to teacher-students, or in some othercases，mostly teacher-some students. As a result, most of the students in class are justobservers. Truely, from the perspective of time, more time has been allocated tostudents as a whole，but from the perspective of every individual student, the majorityof students have not benefited from it. English learning is still going on anindependent, isolated and no-communication basis.According to the above-mentioned reality，schools are lacking greatly infostering students，sense and capability of cooperation，and large college Englishclasses can not take care of every individual student In this way, within thetheoretical framework of affective theory, cognitive-development theory and socialinterdependence theory，this paper is an attempt in an action research, aiming to guideindependent college English-learners to adopt small-group cooperative learningapproach so as to develop their sense and capability of cooperation and improve theirlearning attitude and behavior as well as their intercultural communicationcompetence. Cooperative learning refers to the form of mutual aid learning thatstudent
