Application Of Scaffolding Teaching In English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

English writing is a practice of the integrated skill in using the language. Not only is it one of the four basic skills of language learning but also it is an important aspect of communicative ability. At the same time, the New English Curriculum Criterion has set high and concrete goal in English writing. Therefore, English writing has been paid more attention to in foreign language teaching. However, many problems still exist in the current high school English writing teaching. So it is a challenging task facing the high school teachers that how to improve the students'English writing ability efficiently and how to make the current English writing teaching more effective.Scaffolding teaching is based upon constructivism, which depends upon"the Zone of Proximal Development"created by Vygotsky. In this concept, the learners can gradually deepen the understanding of the question through dissolving the complex study task under the guidance of adults or peers. On completing the study task, the learners'ability can be improved and students can become more and more confident and independent. At last, when the temporary support is removed, students can solve the problems by themselves. This approach has been turned out effective in teaching and it has been widely used in western countries. However, there are still few empirical studies about scaffolding teaching in China. Therefore, the essay makes an attempt to study how to teach high school English writing under the guidance of this approach.Firstly, the thesis briefly introduces the background, the significance and purpose of the study, and the structure of the study. Then it introduces the present situation of English writing in high school and tells us the problems existing in the English writing. At the same time, it shows us that how to apply the scaffolding teaching to the English writing teaching. At last, an experiment was used to prove that the scaffolding teaching contributes to improving the students'writing level and changing their attitude to the English writing. The author chose two classes to carry out the experiment: Class two and Class three in Grade one in No. 2 middle school, Feng Nan District, Tang Shan City, Hebei Province. Class Two served as the experimental class in which there were 30 students, including 17 boys and 13 girls. Class Three, which served as the control class, had the same number of the students as Class Two, but there were 15 boys and 15 girls. The scaffolding teaching was conducted in the experimental class while the traditional teaching method was conducted in the control class. The research was carried out mainly through pre-test, post-test, questionnaire and an interview. The effectiveness of the experiment can be shown by comparing between the control class and the experimental class. It can be concluded that scaffolding teaching can effectively contribute to improving the learners'English writing. Through the questionnaire and interview, it can be seen that learners show positive attitudes towards the scaffolding teaching and the students'interest in English writing has been enhanced greatly. The last part shows the major findings of the research, implications for the writing teaching, limitations of the study and suggestions for future study. The author hopes that the result of this study can supply some reference for future study on scaffolding teaching in China.