1. Introduction
The rain class is the online and Tsinghua University online education office. A teaching artifact developed based on the use of modern information technology to teach. The courseware PowerPoint and the student terminal WeChat App are effectively integrated, from and the problem of teaching and student interaction and the like is solved, and finally, the quality of the teaching material is improved effectively.
Over the years, scholars at home and abroad have explored the connotation of “student-centered teaching method” and communicative translation classroom. Wu Yalin (2005) interpreted the educational concept of “student-centered”. Chen Bifeng (2007) studied and practiced the “student-centered” education model. Wu Minzhi (2008) reviewed and looked into the past and future of student-centered foreign language teaching in China. In addition, Li Jiaxuan (2009), Shi Fen (2009) and others discussed the combination of foreign language teaching and student-centered model in English translation classes in vocational colleges.
Cooperative learning teaching mode refers to a teaching mode in which all the students in the class are grouped into several groups according to the actual level of each student, and each group of students (2 - 6 people) jointly study and discuss problems. The teacher gives timely guidance through touring observation and timely feedback of information. It is a combination of modern education technology to stimulate students to actively explore the problem, thus, each group of students through mutual research and discussion to solve these problems to achieve basic knowledge, improve the cognitive structure, and optimize the quality of thinking. In a word, it is a teaching method in which every student is fully developed.
As an innovative teaching theory, cooperative teaching theory has reformed classroom teaching methods and activated classroom teaching, which plays an important role in Management (Bi-lingual) translation teaching.
1.1. Cooperative Learning Mode
In most cases, the learning mode focuses on the communication between teachers and students, so that teachers can be knowledge disseminators and students can be knowledge receivers. However, under the guidance of new teaching objectives, it has become an irresistible trend to enhance the communication between students and students. For the teaching of Management (Bi-lingual) translation course, cooperative learning mode can not only help students learn translation knowledge, but also cultivate students’ knowledge and skills, so that students’ knowledge and skills can be applied to improve the teaching environment of English translation.
1) Be beneficial to improve students’ communicative competence
As a language, the ultimate purpose of English is communication. However, this view coincides with the cooperative teaching mode, which also requires students to communicate with each other. By organizing their own languages and elaborating in groups, students can maximize their communication skills in English. Students use their own accumulated English language ability, through English expression, to integrate the content of the translation, finally, the problems in the translation will be readily solved.
2) Be beneficial to cultivate students’ psychological quality
The traditional Management (Bi-lingual) Class focuses on the teacher and usually adopts the mode of unilateral communication between students and teachers, but cooperative learning mode can develop this learning mode into multilateral communication learning. Students communication can let other members of the group stimulate a desire to learn Management (Bi-lingual) translation, to help them cultivate learning motivation, and, by letting them participate in the group learning, feel the charm of Management (Bi-lingual) translation, and finally develop the students’ psychological quality, let them interested in Management (Bi-lingual) translation study from the bottom of their heart.
3) Be helpful for students to develop comprehensive Management (Bi-lingual) skills
Cooperative learning mode is the further development of the original teaching mode of Management (Bi-lingual) translation course. Therefore, through various forms of cooperative learning mode, students can cooperate with each other to translate languages and switch between various translation modes. This way can not only help students apply various translation skills, but also enable students to summarize translation methods that are more suitable for the context through mutual discussion.
1.2. The Function of Rain Classroom
Rain classroom is a new wisdom teaching tool developed by Tsinghua university online education office and school online. Through PowerPoint and WeChat, it can realize the omnidirectional and multi-level interaction between teachers and students. Before class, the teacher will push the relevant learning materials to the students’ mobile phone, and the students will learn independently; in class, the teacher will use the “rain classroom” tool to synchronize the PPT to the students “WeChat” to facilitate the students to understand the learning content in real time, and fully stimulate the students’ learning vitality and enhance the classroom interaction through the functions of real-time answering questions and screen interaction. Based on the mixed teaching mode of “rain classroom”, using the convenience of “rain classroom” teaching tools, meeting the characteristics of individualized teaching, big data analysis and so on, it can stimulate students’ interest in learning, improve their initiative and enthusiasm in learning, and thus effectively improve the quality of classroom teaching.
2. Necessity of Cooperative Learning in Management (Bi-Lingual) Class
The traditional translation teacher is responsible for the whole class. Faced with the authority of knowledge imparters—teachers, the only thing students can do is to passively accept knowledge and imitate the knowledge and skills of teachers as much as possible.
By contrast, in traditional teaching model, students cannot serve as the main body of learning in the teaching, the students’ positive feelings cannot be experienced, their will quality cannot be reflected, and various levels of students are difficult to fully develop due to their different qualities. Thus，it will inevitably cause the “one size fits all” phenomenon that “excellent student” can’t fully accept knowledge, at the same time, “poor student” can’t digest all the knowledge, which directly affects the cultivation of the students with good personality and expertise. We know that in the teaching process, teachers’ teaching and students’ learning is the mutual influence and restriction of a whole, each has its own integrity and unity.
Therefore, in classroom teaching, teachers should emphasize more on students’ autonomic learning, but at the same time, teachers should also realize that almost all of the teaching process occurred in the student group interpersonal interaction environment, therefore they will attach great importance to the students’ individual and group interaction, strengthen and guide the cooperation learning among students, to let the students learn to accept a common goal, and take actions toward this goal; Learn to get along with others and dare to express yourself. And can learn modestly; Learn to deal with the interests between the individual and the collective, learn reasonable division of labor, orderly action; Good at self-reliance and purposeful cooperation. Therefore, it is of great significance to construct the classroom teaching mode of cooperative learning.
3. Experimental Analysis
3.1. Subject
There are 125 students who majored in Management (Bi-lingual) in grade 2019 of X University and Y University in Shandong are selected as the subjects. The course is divided into several modules. The study of each module is supplemented by rain classroom.
3.2. Methods
The research methods used in this study are classroom practice, questionnaire and interview, including the following contents:
Method 1: Classroom Practice
1) The role of teachers in Management (Bi-lingual) Class.
Firstly, the teacher must distribute the group member reasonably—the premise to the success of cooperative learning in groups.
According to the actual situation in the class, the students of different levels and categories were consciously divided into groups according to the principle of “homogeneity among groups, heterogeneity within groups”, and 4 students were selected for each group. Its purpose is to achieve intra-group cooperation and inter-group competition in the process of student cooperation, so that every student has the opportunity to show themselves in the cooperation, so that students with learning difficulties can continue to improve in mutual help, so that students with good learning can also gain confidence. In addition, it is better to select a group leader for each group to lead the group into the role and carry out cooperation. Secondly, there should be a division of labor among the team members, that is, each student should play a specific role, and the roles of the team should be rotated to enhance the effectiveness of the interaction between students and students.
Secondly, the teacher should choose the content suitable for cooperative learning—the key to the success of cooperative learning in groups.
a) Regular learning content, its significance lies in mutual verification.
b) Inquiry-based and challenging learning content (such as difficult thinking questions).
c) Open-solutions learning content (actively participate in discussion, hands-on operation, in-depth research, draw correct conclusions, and sublimate everyone’s knowledge and ideas).
d) What can’t be learned by individuals (students have never experienced or have difficulty finding patterns).
Thirdly, the teacher must grasp the group cooperation study opportunity carefully.
The leading role of teachers should not be neglected in group cooperative learning. Therefore, in group cooperation and communication, the teacher must not only organize and guide students in a timely manner, but also be involved in the learning groups and among students. In terms of content, time and students’ emotions, the teacher must timely regulate and control the students so as to achieve the purpose of mutual learning and improvement. In this process, teachers should neither give too much interference in the learning process of students, nor ignore the students with learning difficulties, but teach students some method to exploration and discovery, continue to cause the collision of students thinking and lead students to explore the depths. In particular, teachers should give more attention to those students who are usually not talkative and create more time and opportunities for them to speak out.
Fourthly, the teachers should establish incentive evaluation mechanism
Teachers’ evaluation of students’ learning will have a strong guiding effect on students’ development. Therefore, in the process of cooperative learning, teachers should make timely encouraging, targeted, guiding, comprehensive and positive evaluation of students’ speech and learning performance. For groups and individuals who have performed well, teachers are supposed to give positive, lively and interesting rewards in a timely manner, such as “your answer is great”, “your answer is comprehensive”, “your way of thinking is very unique creative”, etc., to promote team interaction, help, mutual learning between reference, to let every student actively involved in the thick cooperation study atmosphere, to experience the success and happiness in cooperative learning and to increase interest in learning and cooperative study.
In conclusion, the teachers must well perform a goofy leader, give full play to teachers’ leading role, respect the principal position of students and establish a democratic, equal and harmonious relationship between teachers and students under the new period.
2) The process of group cooperative learning
Firstly, preview.
Members of the group shall prepare for the class in advance, sort out all kinds of knowledge points of the unit which to be learned, have an overall understanding, and form a knowledge framework or a mind map.
Secondly, communication.
The purpose of cooperation and communication within the group is to collect all students in each group to sort out the situation and get the optimal plan.
Thirdly, perform.
The purpose of performing in the whole class is to check the omission, collection version and the wisdom of all students, to achieve knowledge sharing, common methods and to achieve the purpose of common improvement.
Fourthly, feedback.
By means of spot check, mutual check and test, the teachers shall check the learning tasks and effects completed by groups and individuals and decide their own teaching process according to the feedback.
Method 2: Questionnaires
The study investigates the students who participated in the course in the second semester of the 2019-2020 academic year, and issued, recovered and counted questionnaires. A total of 125 questionnaires are distributed, 122 valid questionnaires are collected, with a recovery rate of 97.6%. The main content of the questionnaire involves students’ evaluation of the course, difficulties in learning the course, ways of cooperative learning and students’ evaluation and suggestions on teachers and peers. The questionnaire includes objective questions and subjective questions, objective questions include single choice and multiple choice, subjective questions fill in the blanks.
Method 3: Interview
An interview is taken by me with the class committee of these four classes, and conducts a one-to-one individual interview with 12 students other than the class committee of these four classes. The interview questions are basically consistent with the questionnaire, and the interviewees are mainly asked to supplement and explain the questionnaire answers, so as to further understand the interviewees’ evaluation and feedback on this course and improve the reliability of the research.
4. Result and Analysis
4.1. Curriculum Evaluation
Curriculum evaluation is mainly carried out from five aspects, including course content selection, teaching methods, practicality, learning effects and teachers’ teaching. According to the results of the questionnaire, more than half of the students are satisfied with the content of the course, the practicality of the course and the teachers’ teaching. But half say the results were not satisfactory, which mainly reflected in the controversy over the use of teaching methods. Only 5.7% of the students are very satisfied, while 44.2% are not satisfied or not satisfied (see Figure 1). Later on, the teaching methods will be further investigated to find out the reasons.
4.2. Difficulty in Learning the Class
Through research and investigation, it is found that although students’ feedback is different from each other, there are commonalities in many problems. Most Management (Bi-lingual) major students believe that there are a lot of difficulties in the learning of English translation courses, The main situations are as follows:
1) What kind of troubles do students have in learning this course? As can be seen from Figure 2, the majority of students feel that their management knowledge is insufficient (108 people in total), more than half of them think that there are too few opportunities for practice, and nearly half of them find it difficult to master translation skills. As for the students with weak learning motivation, few of them are too lazy to write and have no interest in learning. For learners with low motivation level, if appropriate level of teacher control is guaranteed, better learning effect will be achieved. However, for learners with high motivation level, if sufficient learner control is provided, better learning effects will be achieved. Some scholars have proposed that if students can get rid of the shackles of class, create real situations, or even take them out of class to carry out field management operation and translation practice in real management and translation scenes under the condition that they have strong learning motivation, it will achieve twice the result with half the effort.
2) What are the difficulties of cooperation in the learning process? (see Figure 2)
For each module, an expert group composed of students is arranged to make a PPT presentation. Cooperative learning is the most obvious in this aspect, but it can be seen from Figure 2 that there are many difficulties in the process of cooperative learning. There are four prominent aspects: most students prefer to work alone, lack of communication in making presentation, poor timing and heavy study tasks of students, which affect cooperation. And, it also reflects that some students are accustomed to the traditional way of learning by themselves, and their poor communication and coordination ability leads to a vicious circle—they are less and less willing to cooperate in learning, which also causes obstacles to the creation of cooperative learning atmosphere in the class. If teachers start from the beginning of the semester to guide students to change the concept of learning, from traditional habits slowly to the mechanism of cooperative learning, students in the whole semester of cooperative learning input should be more effective.
4.3. Management (Bi-Lingual) Class Activities
According to Figure 3, in the contrast of teaching activity, the students favorite working form is pairwork, the second is team competition with more cycles, then the PPT show in expert groups, “jigsaw puzzle” learning pattern and physical display, for group learning after class, the students who are willing to accept are not many, only 29 people. This also corresponds to the conclusion drawn by the students in Figure 3 about the difficulties in cooperative learning. Advantages are obvious to working in groups of two. The two-person group had more communication than the multiple-person group. Without teachers’ intervention, they have certain autonomy. And the teacher may join in at any time, does not
![]()
Figure 3. Contrast of various teaching activities.
affect other group discussion. As for the multi-cycle group competition, it creates a lively and intense classroom atmosphere. In addition, all students have to walk to the designated place and return to their seats after one round of competition. The tension and relaxation of the classroom rhythm is attractive, which is the reason why students like it. Jigsaw puzzles and physical demonstrations are also very creative activities, but because the teaching materials provided are too difficult for students to grasp, so the effect is very small. The after-class study group of students has lost its charm due to the lack of a strong supervision mechanism and evaluation standards, thus has not been recognized by students.
4.4. The Students’ Evaluation of their Peers and Teachers
Whether it is for the expert group or for the teachers, the requirements of students are relatively high, which shows that students attach great importance to this course.
1) Evaluation and recommendations of the expert group (see Figure 4)
As can be seen from Figure 4, in terms of pre-class preparation, classroom manipulation, art explanation, explanation form and explanation content, some students think that the expert group needs to be improved. Most of the students are not satisfied with their own or other students’ performance in the expert group. In fact, most of the expert team members try their best to complete the corresponding module assignments, but the teacher almost give them the initiative, does not make too many restrictions and requirements on the content and form, and there is no corresponding evaluation standard to measure their presentation.
2) Evaluation and recommendations of the teachers
From Figure 5 shows, the student is accustomed to traditional way of teaching and put forward some requirements towards teacher’s explanation both on the quality and quantity, including greatly increasing the proportion of interpretation and enriching interpretation content, at the meantime, they are also
![]()
Figure 4. Evaluation and recommendations of the expert group.
![]()
Figure 5. Evaluation and recommendations of the teachers.
fully aware of the importance of practice, require to provide more practice opportunities, and some students hope teachers personally to guide practice. In addition, they require teachers to play a better role as evaluators and mentors, which also mean teachers should further refine their evaluation and guidance of students.
5. Conclusion and Suggestion
This thesis is a case study, which provides some reference and inspiration for the feasibility analysis of the cooperative learning teaching model of Management (Bi-lingual) translation course. However, this study also has some limitations: the number and scope of interviewees are limited, and the survey of classroom effect from the perspective of students is somewhat subjective.
In order to change the current situation in Management (Bi-lingual) Class and promote the application of cooperative learning teaching mode, so as to improve students’ cooperative learning ability in class, complete classroom tasks more actively and effectively, and truly improve students’ translation level, the following suggestions are put forward:
1) Enhance students’ sense of cooperation
In group cooperative learning, various cooperative learning tasks are designed so that students can learn knowledge through communication with their partners. However, it is difficult to solve many problems in a short period of time by individual efforts. Students can solve problems through group efforts and feel the importance of cooperation.
2) Establish orderly cooperation rules
Because the group cooperation study will enliven the classroom atmosphere, the teacher must establish a set of orderly cooperation routine. In the case of classroom disorder, teachers can let students stop, put forward their own requirements for classroom discipline. In the learning process of daily cooperation, teachers should cultivate good learning habits of students, develop their habits of independent thinking, active participation, careful listening and abiding by classroom discipline. In this way, the class will be in order to avoid confusion.
In a word, group cooperative teaching mode is a kind of methods which require teachers to timely and appropriately apply it, explore and give play to the advantages of cooperative learning, and enable students to learn and use English in participation, practice and experience, which is more conducive to the cultivation of students’ comprehensive language use ability. As the organizer of group cooperative learning, teachers should act as managers, promoters, consultants, participants and other roles, aiming at promoting the development of the whole teaching process and enabling students to learn new knowledge. In cooperative learning, the original “authority-obedience” relationship between teachers and students has gradually become the “guidance-participation” relationship. Only by grasping the essence and rules of cooperative learning can teachers effectively cultivate students’ good cooperative learning habits.
Acknowledgements
This research is sponsored by National Social Science Fund (No. 13BJY115); Shandong Education and Science Project (No. BCGY201903); Post-graduates Teaching Reform Research Project of Shandong Agricultural University (JYYB2019002); Under-graduates Teaching Reform Research Project of Shandong Agricultural University (X2019060).