The Effectiveness Of The Scaffolding Instructional Model In Teaching Practical Writing At Vocational Colleges

The scaffolding instructional model is to help students probe into knowledge learning independently, and achieve the construction of knowledge and information finally by constructing a series of appropriate conceptual frameworks and concrete teaching circumstances. The present study applies the scaffolding instructional model to the practical writing teaching in vocational colleges, aiming to discuss the following focuses of the study:1) Whether the scaffolding instructional model in practical writing teaching at vocational college is more effective than traditional teaching model;2) Whether the scaffolding instructional model can improve the quality of the vocational college students'practical writing.The participants are seventy students from Shandong Water Polytechnic College Business English Major enrolled in 2008's fall. There are two classes in this experiment, one being taught in the scaffolding model as the experimental group (EG), and the other being instructed in the traditional students-listen-to-teacher method as the control group (CG)). During the process of the experiment, eight different types of practical writings are respectively provided to the two classes, totally 310 writing samples. Through analyzing the change tendency of the common writing errors, this paper aims at addressing and exploring the effectiveness of the scaffolding instructional model in teaching practical writing at vocational college.This study shows that the scaffolding instructional model in practical writing teaching is more effective for the students in the vocational colleges than the traditional one. Before the experiment, the two classes are of little difference in their practical writing capacity. However, compared with CG, the average error in EG is at a lower level in many aspects, including format, language norms, grammar, collocation, meaning expression, punctuation, contents and spelling. In addition, the result is more obvious for the aspects of language norms, grammar, collocation and spelling. Therefore, the results indicate that the scaffolding instructional model in practical writing teaching has significantly improved students'practical writing quality.The present study holds a great pedagogical significance. As for the teachers, they should provide the students with necessary writing strategies in their practical writing teaching. Teachers can build different levels of scaffolding in every setting based on the contents of the practical writing. Also, they can offer guidance for their students in which the students can not make clear about the scaffoldings. It is can help students have deeper understanding about the scaffoldings. Meanwhile, a cooperative writing environment should be created for students to engage in. Let students fulfill the construction of the knowledge meaning through the "scaffolding" in the cooperative learning environment. It helps students to improve their practical writing abilities and the quality of their practical writing.