An Investigation Into Scaffolding Strategies Of Teacher Discourse In Senior High English Reading Class

Teacher discourse is the main source of language input for students in the classroom,and its importance cannot be overstated.With the development of social constructivism in teaching and learning,scholars are using the scaffolding theory and teacher discourse to explore the effects of learners’ second language acquisition.In foreign language classrooms,teachers scaffold learners’ language learning through teacher discourse,so they need to use appropriate scaffolding strategies to offer support and help in the aspect of emotion,cognition and language in order to enable students to cross the zone of proximal development and gain language acquisition.This study takes teachers’ scaffolding strategies as the starting point based on teacher discourse.The research is used to answer the following research questions.1.What scaffolding strategies are used in teacher discourse in reading class?What scaffolding functions are achieved?2.What maybe the problems about the scaffolding strategies used by teachers in reading class?Based on the research questions,this study adopts social constructivism theory,the zone of proximal development and interaction theory as the basis,classroom observation,teachers interview and students questionnaire as the research methods to answer the research questions based on exploring and analyzing teachers’ scaffolding strategies in high school English reading class with four teachers and one hundred and sixty students in grade two of a senior high school in Haikou City.The above study reveals that(1)High school English teachers use nine scaffolding strategies in the process of teaching reading,including questioning,modeling,repeating,reformulating,hinting,explaining,encouraging,feedback and extending waiting time.Six scaffolding functions are achieved: recruitment;reduction in degrees of freedom;direction maintenance;marking critical features;frustration control and demonstration.(2)Based on the scaffolding strategies the teachers adopt,the following three problems are found and summarized: firstly,too much help from the teachers,which is mainly reflected in their inability to control the degree of using“scaffolding” and over-regulation of scaffolding,and leads to a decrease in the effectiveness of scaffolding and students’ reliance on others and their inability to output their language.Secondly,the positive feedback is in the form of a simple“yes/right”,which is not able to evaluate students’ performance effectively or stimulate their further thinking.Thirdly,the waiting time for students to think is short,with most of the teachers’ waiting time being three or less than three seconds.Based on these findings,this study also offers some pedagogical suggestions in order to provide high school English teachers in improving the effectiveness of scaffolding when using scaffolding strategies.