An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Scaffolding Instruction To Senior High School Students' English Writing Proficiency

Language is the most important tool for human beings to think and communicate and it is of great significance to promote the all-round development of human beings.Nowadays,with the increasing globalization of society and economy,English has become one of the essential qualities of the students.In addition,the “English curriculum standard”(2003)stresses that English writing is the embodiment of students' comprehensive proficiency of using language and an important skill in one of the four basic language skills,that is,English listening,speaking,reading and writing.Besides,it is also one of the essential communication skills that students must grasp in the new era.However,the current situation of English writing teaching in senior high schools is not optimistic and there are still many problems in the process of students' writing.Therefore,how to improve senior high school students' English writing proficiency and their writing attitude has become an urgent and challenging task for teachers.Scaffolding instruction,based on “the theory of proximal development zone”,is one of the three teaching models under the guidance of constructivism theory and the teaching process is student-centered.The teachers set up scaffolding and create real situations for students,making them gradually transcend “the zone of proximal development” and reach the next developmental stage through independent exploration,collaborative learning and effect evaluation until the learner is able to independently solve problems on their own.On the basis of that,the learners enter the next developmental zone.The author applies the scaffolding instruction to English writing in senior high school and tries to answer the following two research questions:1.What are the effects of scaffolding instruction on students' English writing proficiency?2.What are the effects of scaffolding instruction on students' English writing interest,confidence and habit,and what is their attitude towards scaffolding instruction?And then,this thesis presents the study of the teaching approaches of English writing,scaffolding instruction and the relationship between them.At the same time,it also introduces the theoretical basis of scaffolding instruction,which mainly involves the theory of constructivism and “the zone of proximal development”.The author chose two parallel classes of Dongjiang senior high school affiliated to Guangzhou University,in Heyuan city of Guangdong province as participants,and carried on the teaching experiment for a period of 14 weeks.One class was the experimental class,a total of 52 people and another class was the control class,a total of 54 people.The experimental class used the approach of scaffolding instruction,and the author designed the teaching process through combination of scaffolding instruction with the characteristics of the participants,which included the setting up and withdrawal of scaffolding in pre-writing,while-writing and post-writing.In the control class,the traditional teaching approach which was called product-based approach was used.The instruments include tests(pre-test and post-test),questionnaires(questionnaire I and questionnaire II)and an interview.After the experiment,all the data were analyzed by SPSS 22.0 and Excel 2003 software.The conclusion of this study: 1.The results show that scaffolding instruction can improve students' English writing proficiency,which is mainly reflected in the following four aspects: content,grammar,vocabulary and coherence through analysis and comparison of the data,including the paired sample t-test,independent sample t-test,and change of the average number and average scores of high-level students,intermediate-level students and low-level students before and after the experiment in the experimental class and the control class.2.It can be seen that scaffolding instruction can stimulate students' interest,improve their confidence and cultivate habits in English writing through the questionnaires before and after the experiment and the interview of nine students of experiment class(including three high-level students,three intermediate-level students and three low-level students).Besides,the students in experimental class hold positive attitude towards SI.The author hopes that this study could provide some implications for English writing teaching in the future.