The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To English Writing In Senior High School

According to the national English curriculum, English writing is important in Englishlearning for the students in senior high school. But there exist many problems in the currentEnglish writing teaching in schools. How to improve the students’ writing ability and how toactivate the students’ interest and motivation towards English writing become extremelyurgent and very challenging in the pedagogical tasks.Scaffolding instruction is a popular teaching model based on the constructivism,Vygotsky’s concept of zone of proximal development (ZPD) and his sociocultural theory.This teaching method has been proved very effective and it is applied widely in westerncountries. But in China, very few empirical studies have been carried out on the scaffoldinginstruction, especially in the field of English writing in senior high school.This research mainly focuses on the study of scaffolding instruction and its applicationin English writing in senior high school. There is an experiment related to this teachingmethod in this study. The hypotheses that are raised in this experiment are: a. scaffoldinginstruction can improve the students’ proficiency in English writing; b. scaffolding instructioncan activate the students’ interest and motivation about English writing; c. scaffoldinginstruction can improve the students’ ability to solve problems in English writing.100students in two classes are chosen as the participants of this study. One of theclasses is assigned as control class, while the other is experimental class. The traditionalteaching method is still used in the control class, and the scaffolding instruction is carried outin the experimental class.Instruments are applied in the study, the pre-test and post-test, observation, questionnaireand interview. Through the analysis of the dada and information getting from the study, itsuccessfully proves the hypotheses of the study.Results show that the use of scaffolding instruction can improve the students’ writingproficiency, activate the students’ interest and motivation in English writing and improve thestudents’ ability in solving problems in English writing. Besides that, it is also found thatscaffolding instruction can enhance the emotion between students and teacher and strengthen unity of the whole class. Finally it proves that scaffolding instruction is effective inpedagogical activities.