Cooperative Learning in FLT Settings in China's Tertiary Education

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.