The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To Continuation Writing Task Teaching In Senior High School

Driven by new English curriculum standards for high schools and the reform of National Matriculation English Test(NMET),Shandong Province incorporated continuation writing task(CWT)in NMET in 2020.This writing task advocates reading for writing and aims to promote writing through reading.However,due to the lack of theoretical guidance and relevant teaching experience,many English teachers still adopt traditional reading-writing teaching mode,which doesn’t exactly match the purpose of CWT.Moreover,learning cooperation,strategy training as well as students’ language proficiency are often neglected in traditional reading-writing class,as a result,students’ learning effects are not desirable as expected.As a mature teaching mode,scaffolding instruction has been widely used in teaching and a large number of researches have proved its positive influence on students’ learning.However,few studies combine scaffolding instruction with CWT teaching.Based on this,this study applies scaffolding instruction to CWT teaching,aiming to improve students’ CWT writing competence through the boost of positive learning attitudes and the cultivation of effective writing strategies.This study focuses on three questions: 1)What are the effects of scaffolding instruction on senior high school students’ CWT learning attitudes? 2)What are the effects of scaffolding instruction on senior high school students’ CWT writing strategy use? 3)What are the effects of scaffolding instruction on senior high school students’ CWT writing competence?In order to answer the above three questions,a 20-week CWT teaching is conducted in two parallel classes of Grade 2 in a high school in Jinan,Shandong Province,including a total of 90 students.In CWT teaching,the experimental class(EC)adopts scaffolding instruction,while the control class(CC)adopts traditional reading-writing teaching mode.Firstly,Questionnaire I and Questionnaire II are employed to learn students’ CWT learning attitudes and writing strategy use respectively.Both questionnaires are sent out to two classes before and teaching experiment,then the questionnaire data are analyzed by SPSS 22.0 and Microsoft Excel so as to explore the effects of scaffolding instruction on students’ CWT learning attitudes and writing strategy use.In addition,in order to figure out the impacts of scaffolding instruction on students’ CWT writing competence,students’ CWT writing scores in pre-test and post-test are analyzed by SPSS 22.0.Further,the author compares several pieces of pre-test and post-test CWT writings from EC so as to learn students’ achievements in CWT writing content,structure and language.Lastly,the author interviews several students from EC to find out underlying reasons for their achievements in CWT learning attitudes,writing strategy use and writing competence.Major findings of this study are as follows.1)Scaffolding instruction has positive influence on students’ CWT learning attitudes.Scaffolding instruction can cultivate students’ positive cognition of CWT,increase their CWT writing interest and confidence,and enhance their CWT learning motivation.2)Scaffolding instruction increases the frequency of students’ CWT writing strategy use.Compared to CC,students in EC use meta-cognitive,cognitive and writing output strategies more often in CWT writing.3)Scaffolding instruction can promote students’ CWT writing competence.In general,compared with CC,EC makes a more obvious improvement in CWT writing scores.Specifically,there are three points: In terms of content,students perform better in logicality and richness;as for structure,students better deal with the coherence between two uncompleted paragraphs;when it comes to language,students make less errors in tenses and perform better in language imitation.Based on data analysis and findings of this study,the following suggestions are proposed for senior high school English teachers: 1)It’s necessary for teachers to create problem situation in CWT teaching;2)Teachers are supposed to provide targeted and dynamic writing scaffolding for students in CWT teaching;3)Teachers should attach great importance to learning cooperation and writing evaluation in CWT teaching;4)Teachers ought to improve teaching presetting and observation ability.Finally,this study also has some limitations.The main limitation of this study is that research findings are less representative and objective due to insufficient research samples.