An Empirical Study On Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To Oral English Teaching In Junior High School

Oral English is one of the basic skills of English. It is a very important aspect ofthe comprehensive abilities in language use. The task of developing the students’communication competence has been clearly stated in the New English CurriculumCriteria.The study attempts to apply scaffolding instruction in oral English teaching injunior middle school. With the aim of improving the oral English ability of juniormiddle school students and fostering their interest and confidence in English learning,the author carried out an empirical study with two questions. The research questionsin this study are:1) Can application of scaffolding instruction improve junior middle schoolstudents’ oral English ability?2) Is scaffolding instruction helpful for fostering interest and confidence ofEnglish learning?In order to get convincing evidence to test the effect of applying scaffoldinginstruction to oral English teaching in junior middle school, a16-week teachingexperiment was conducted in Tangxia Junior Middle School of Dongguan City.114students from two classes were involved in the experiment. Two classes wererespectively treated as controlled class and experimental class. The experimentalgroup was taught with the scaffolding instruction model, while the control group wastaught with the task-based teaching method. The procedures of the experiment werepresented in Chapter4. Pre-test in the first week and post-test in the sixteenth weekwere conducted to test the oral English ability in four different aspects: pronunciation,fluency, interaction and free expression. Also questionnaires and interview were usedto investigate the students’ attitude to their oral English class and interest andconfidence in English learning. The data collection and analysis of the experimentinclude three aspects. Firstly, the data of the pre-test was collected in the first week ofthe experiment. Then at the end of the experiment, in the sixteenth week, the data ofthe post-test was collected. Afterwards, the data of the questionnaire and the interviewwas collected. The data of the oral tests were analyzed quantitatively with SPSS20and the data of the questionnaire and the interview were analyzed qualitatively.The results and discussion in chapter5shows the improvement of the students’ oral English ability. Students’ interest and confidence in English learning of the EG ismuch better than that of the CG can also be reflected. Meanwhile, we can find thatafter applying scaffolding instruction, students developed autonomous learning abilityand cooperative consciousness. The relationship between the teacher and the studentsis greatly improved as well.The study basically achieved the expected goals, which not only reflect thefeasibility and practicability of scaffolding instruction model in oral English teachingbut also provide constructive suggestions for the future practice.