An Experimental Research Of Scaffolding Instruction In Senior High School Writing Class

In most Chinese western rural high school, traditional writing approach inEFL writing class focuses on accuracy of language but neglects how to helpstudents improve writing proficiency. Therefore, Scaffolding Instruction isadvocated by researchers home and abroad. This approach focuses on offering“scaffolds” in the students’ whole writing process. During writing, studentscan get help from both teachers and their peers, which proved very effective.In order to identify the effects of Scaffolding Instruction on learners’writing proficiency and their interest and confidence in writing, an experimentwas conducted. The experiment was designed as comparative study involvingone experimental class which received Scaffolding Instruction in their writingclass and one control class which received traditional writing teaching. Datawere collected via the following instruments: pre-test, post-test andquestionnaire surveys. The study attempts to answer the following questions:1) Will the learners of different levels who receive the instruction ofscaffolding improve their writing proficiency more greatly than those whoreceive the instruction of traditional writing teaching?2) Will the learners who receive the instruction of scaffolding increasetheir interest and confidence in writing more greatly than those who receivethe instruction of traditional writing teaching?The results from the experiment indicate that Scaffolding Instruction inwriting successfully increased learners’ writing proficiency as well as theirinterest and confidence in writing. And intermediate level students madegreatest progress.As was shown in the study, after a term of experiment, the mean of theEC was1.51points higher than that of the CC, and t-value analysis indicatedthat there existed significant difference between CC and EC in the total (p<0.05). Therefore, it could be concluded that the performance of the ECwas better than that of the CC. So the findings supported the hypothesis thatScaffolding Instruction could improve students’ writing proficiency moregreatly than the traditional writing approach.The study also told us that there were significant differences between thetwo groups concerning learners’ interest and confidence in writing:1) A higher proportion of students from EC (53.33%) liked Englishwriting than CC (32.79%). The difference between them was significant.2) More students from EC did not think it difficult to write Englishcompositions. In answering the question “Is writing difficult?”,35%in ECwhile45.90%in CC gave affirmative answers. The difference between themwas also significant.3) More students in EC started to realize the importance of conjunctionof a composition (61.67%in EC while34.43%in CC); meanwhile, thedifference between the two groups was very significant. Most learners in thetwo groups still held the view that grammar as well as language was the mostimportant factor of a good composition (90%in EC and83.61%in CC); at thesame time, content took up another major part, too.On the whole, Scaffolding Instruction is an effective approach in writingteaching. During the implementation of Scaffolding Instruction, seekingmeasures to make students of different writing levels develop is the essentialkey to success for their writing approach.