The Application Of Scaffolding Instructional Model To Vocational Oral English Teaching

Many vocational students are not good at study and even worse at studying English. Lacking of English speaking environment and efficient English learning methods, many vocational students hold negative attitude towards oral English learning. They would not like to speak and communicate in English and cannot express their ideas in English, and some of the vocational students lose their interest in learning oral English. But speaking is one of the basic skills in mastering English language, and it is an essential component of English. For improving vocational students’ oral English learning, it needs English teachers’ efforts to explore more efficient methods and strategies of oral English teaching. Therefore, in order to arouse vocational students’ learning interest, make students actively join in oral English learning process and increase the naturalness and efficiency of oral English teaching, the study attempts to introduce the scaffolding instructional model to vocational oral English teaching.The scaffolding instructional model is a kind of teaching pattern, which is based on the Zone of Proximal Development Theory, the Constructivism Theory and the Situational Cognitive Theory. The scaffolding instructional model centers on students’ need and students’ active learning process. With the aid of real situation, independent exploration, cooperative learning and discussion, and effective evaluation, the teacher or capable peer provides the suitable scaffoldings for learners, and gradually transfers the learning task to learners, and finally removes the scaffoldings. The teacher is an assistant, a helper, a facilitator and the source of English knowledge and a manager of the study activities in students’ learning process. In the scaffolding instructional model, the teacher should try to motivate and keep students’ learning interest and motivation, cultivate students’ self-learning ability, and lead students to participate in the learning process and experience the happiness of learning. Through literature review, this study gives a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the scaffolding instructional model, of the necessity and feasibility of the scaffolding instructional model applied in vocational oral English teaching.In the teaching experiment, vocational students in two classes of grade one in Shangqiu Polytechnic are chosen as the experimental subjects. The students in the experimental class(EC), who major in vehicle inspection and maintenance, are taught by the scaffolding instructional model. Students in the control class(CC), who major in computer application, are taught by the traditional English teaching method. The students of the CC and EC are taught by the same teacher. The teaching experiment lasts 10 weeks from October 2014 to December 2014, and then analyzes the relevant data. Through practical teaching experiment, this study will investigate whether or not the scaffolding instructional model can arouse the students’ interest in oral English learning process, whether or not the scaffolding instructional model can improve students’ oral English acquisition and students’ confidence in English learning process. This teaching experiment can provide practical reference for the design and implementation of vocational oral English teaching, and practical experience for improving the reform of the vocational oral English teaching.In order to make the study more objective and reasonable, the study uses various ways to analyze the teaching experiment. This study conducts oral tests, questionnaires and the interview to collect relevant data. The quantitative analysis is used in the oral tests and questionnaires before and after the teaching experiment. This study also gives the qualitative description of the interview with the randomly chosen subjects from the experimental class. Then the study discusses the feasibility of the application of the scaffolding instructional model to vocational oral English teaching.Through analyzing the results of the pre- and post-test, the pre- and post-questionnaire and interview, the students in the experimental class are more positive and confident in learning process and get higher oral scores and better performance in the post-test than students in the control class. At the same time, students are satisfied with the scaffolding instructional model in the experimental class. The results of this study fully indicate that the scaffolding instructional model is helpful to improve students’ confidence and communicative competence in oral English learning process, and strengthen the efficiency of vocational oral English teaching. This study also proves that the scaffolding instructional model is more effective than the traditional oral English teaching to stimulate and keep students’ oral English learning interest in learning process.According to the above findings, the study proves the feasibility of scaffolding instructional model in vocational oral English teaching. In the final chapter, the thesis also gives major findings, pedagogical implications, limitations of the study and some suggestions for further study on the implementation of scaffolding instructional model to oral English teaching.