A Comparative Research Of Scaffolding In Teacher Discourse Between Novice And Expert Teacher From Primary English

With the development of Social Cultural Theory,the Scaffolding Theory has gradually aroused the interests of foreign language researchers,thus the constructions and functions of scaffolding has become an important field of research.In second language teaching,teachers can build discourse scaffolding for weak students,so as to help students acquire language and promote the development of students’ autonomous learning.Based on the Social Culture Theory,this study adopts classroom observation and interview as research methods,and chooses primary English novice teachers and expert teachers as research subject,and then makes a contrastive analysis about the distribution and function of discourse scaffolding.Through comparison,the author tries to figure out the differences and similarities among novice teachers and expert teachers.And the research questions of this study are as follows:firstly,what are the similarities and differences between novice teachers and expert teachers in distribution of discourse scaffolding? Secondly,what are the similarities and differences between novice teachers and expert teachers in influences of discourse scaffolding on students?Through contrastive analysis,the author finds that there are some similarities and differences between novice teachers and expert teachers in distribution and function of discourse scaffolding.So the findings of this study are shown as follows: firstly,both novice teachers and expert teachers use four types of discourse scaffolding(which includes questioning,feedback,suggestion and demonstration)in their teaching,and questioning scaffolding plays a dominated role among these teachers.However,compared with expert teachers,the distribution of discourse scaffolding in novice teachers’ class is unbalanced;Secondly,both novice teachers and expert teachers use discourse scaffolding to promote the development of students’ cognitive competence.However,with the ignorance of students’ interests and emotions,the emotional assistance of discourse scaffolding is not obvious in novice teachers’ class.And the cognitive function and emotional function of discourse scaffolding are wellembodied in expert teachers’ class.Therefore,the author gives some suggestions with attempt to improve the issue of discourse scaffolding in the novice teachers’ class,and to enhance the effectiveness and feasibility of discourse scaffolding.The suggestions are as follows: firstly,improving the effectiveness of discourse scaffolding based on students’ Zone of Proximal Development;Secondly,giving more attention to the emotional demanding of students and enhancing the emotional assistance of discourse scaffolding;Thirdly,encouraging students take more participation and avoiding the dominant role of teacher.