A Study On The Scaffolding Instructional Model In Junior School English Writing Teaching

Writing is a practice of comprehensive competence in English study and it is also one of the four basic language skills---listening,speaking,reading and writing The New English Curriculum has also put forward a more concrete and higher requirement for writing.However,at present many junior middle school students are very weak in writing and many do not know how to write.First of all,there is no specialized writing course and most of the writing teaching is segmental to the reading course.Besides,traditional teaching method is adopted by many teachers.This method emphasizes writing results while ignoring how to solve the difficulties students meet in their writing.Traditional English writing treats writing as a grammar practice but does not give enough to writing difficulties.When facing a new writing topic,students do not know where to take up,what to write,how to organize language and what the standard of a good writing is.Students’ writing skills can be developed and improved in learning English in junior high schools,writing teaching in junior high schools is particularly important.At present the main methods which in junior high schools tend to overemphasize the leading role of teachers in the teaching activities.As one of the core teaching models of Constructivism,the zone of proximal development(Vygotsky,1978)is the basic part of the scaffolding instruction,and it emphasizes the subjectivity of students.Scaffolding instruction is based on constructivism and the zone of proximal development.In scaffolding instruction,learners can gradually understand the question by dissolving the complex task with the help of teachers or peers.Students can master the knowledge and achieve the goals by themselves after the temporary support removed.The thesis is to study the impact of scaffolding instruction in English writing teaching in junior high school.This study applies scaffolding instruction to English writing teaching in a junior high school in order to explore the practical effects of the scaffolding instruction inEnglish writing teaching in junior high schools from two aspects: effects on the students’ writing scores and effects on students’ English writing anxiety.It attempts to testify the following hypotheses:1.Scaffolding instruction can promote the students’ writing strategies;2.Scaffolding instruction can enhance the students’ collaborative writing;3.Scaffolding instruction can improve the students’ writing proficiency.This study chooses two classes of Grade Nine in Chongqing Wanzhou No.2 Senior High School to start a teaching experiment about 10 weeks.One is the experimental class in which scaffolding instruction has been used in writing teaching and the other is the control class in which the traditional teaching approach is kept.After the experiment,the students show interest and confidently participate in the collaborative writing.Meanwhile,the class has also developed a good writing habit.Furthermore,the statistics show that the experimental class has improved their writing competence in terms of vocabulary,sentence structures and content.The experiment shows that it is effective to apply scaffolding instruction to English writing teaching.It not only improves English writing habits of middle school students and arouses their writing interest in some degree,but also it is more effective than traditional teaching approach in improving students’ English writing ability.However,due to deficiency of the author’s theoretical competence and teaching ability,as well as some other objective reasons,such as the limited experiment time and the difficulty in estimating the ZDP of students,this experiment has some limitations.Therefore,further study on this approach should still be continued.