Teachers’ Scaffolding Roles In Cultivating Junior High School Students’Extra-curricular English Reading

As a basic channel for language input, reading plays an important role in language learning. Reading works not only as a platform for attainment of language, but also as an important way to cultivate students’ autonomous learning ability. At present, middle schools students are still weak in reading proficiency and learner autonomy. The present situation is far behind the requirement of English Curriculum Standards issued by the Ministry of Education. On one hand, it has something to do with the traditional teacher-centered teaching model. One the other hand, it comes from the ignorance of cultivating reading in junior high schools. Therefore, it is very necessary to cultivate autonomous extra-curricular reading in junior schools so as to lay the foundation of their further English learning.The thesis intends to conduct a study of teachers’scaffolding roles in extra-curricular reading in order to cultivate junior high school students’ reading proficiency and learner autonomy. The research questions are as follows, the present situation of learner autonomy in junior high school students’extra-curricular reading, the problems students have in the process of extra-curricular reading, and the scaffolding roles that the teacher should play in terms of developing their autonomous extra-curricular reading.60participants in this study come from Junior Grade Two of Changping No.2High School, Beijing. In order to know the present situation of their extra-curricular reading, all the participants from two classes are asked to answer a questionnaire. According to the problems students have in doing extra-curricular reading, the author conducts an experiment to combine extra-curricular reading with the in-class reading presentations under the guidance of teachers’scaffolding roles. After the experiment, a questionnaire, a reading test and an interview are used to check whether the students have made improvements in reading proficiency and learner autonomy. The data of the questionnaires and the tests are analyzed by SPSW Statistics18.The findings of the study reveal that students’reading proficiency and learner autonomy are both improved under the guidance of the teacher’s scaffolding roles. In the meanwhile, the study shows some shortcomings, such as a small number of participants and limited experiment time. Anyway, it introduces scaffolding roles of the teacher to the practical teaching of extra-curricular reading.