An Action Research On Scaffolding Instruction Of College English Writing Teaching

Writing ability is viewed as an important competence of language output. Recently, with the college English teaching reform, writing in some English examinations takes a greater part compared with other abilities; however, students’ writing skills are not satisfactory. As far as writing teaching is concerned, students and teachers feel that the arrangement of college English class is tight-scheduled, and teaching content in classroom is much heavier, so writing has been a great concern for both students and teachers.Nowadays, scaffolding instruction on the basis of constructivism is accepted and implemented widely by home-and-abroad educationalists. And action research is also a popular approach to help teacher reflect on teaching. Based on the theory of scaffolding instruction, the author made this study in order to explore an effective way to develop learners’writing skills.The author conducted this research on42nursing majors, which lasted about16weeks. Teacher constructed scaffolding for students in writing in the light of writing process; then during each period of class, the author took her own initiative to reflect on teaching, and changed teaching plan and procedure. In the end, the author completed this research with scaffolding instruction in English writing. The data was analyzed by Excel, revealing that95%of the students changed their attitudes towards writing;86%of the participants had a deeper understanding on writing process, and more than95%of the students considered that scaffolding instruction had a positive effect on developing integrality of thesis and ability to express their own statement. Additionally,93%were willing to adopt this approach in future English writing. The author hopes that this research can give worthwhile reference to future study in writing, and help researchers understand deeply that scaffolding instruction can be better conducted associated with writing process.