A Study Of Vocabulary Teaching In Senior High Schools On The Basis Of Scaffolding Theory

Vocabulary teaching has been paid much attention to for a long time. Vocabulary,as an important component of English teaching, has always proved to be an obstacle forEnglish learners and gradually become the nightmare for teachers of English. With somany English words, is there any way to help the learners learn freely and help theteachers teach pleasantly? Therefore, the author of this thesis explores and studiesscaffolding theory, which is based on Constructivism. By combining scaffolding theorywith the actuality of English teaching, the author has conducted much research on themethod of scaffolding vocabulary teaching. This thesis first introduces the aims of theresearch and its theoretical bases; then it reviews the studies in China and overseas onscaffolding teaching. Through detailed explanations of the theories of constructivismand scaffolding, this thesis explores five procedures of scaffolding teaching, namely,building scaffold, entering the context, exploring independently, working cooperativelyand evaluating the results.In order to prove the rationality of this teaching method, the author of this thesishas done some comparative experiments in three months as a cadet teacher. The authorapplies scaffolding vocabulary teaching to teaching English vocabulary in theexperimental class; while in the control class, the author continues using the traditionalteaching method. After analyzing the questionnaires and experiment results, the authorhas confirmed the three hypothesis put forward before the experiments, namely,scaffolding vocabulary teaching is helpful for learners to improve their awarenesses onvocabulary and cooperation and it can also stimulate their interest in vocabularylearning; each procedure in scaffolding vocabulary teaching is conducive to the learningability of learners’ vocabulary study, but the former procedures are comparatively moreimportant because they can directly influence the latter ones.The author of this thesis has made two suggestions for teachers who want to usescaffolding vocabulary teaching. First, vocabulary teaching should consider three vitalfactors (social environment, teachers’ quality and students’ own qualities) that influencevocabulary study; second, its procedures should be closely linked. In the end, the author has raised a teaching plan based on scaffolding vocabulary teaching for English teachersto refer to.