Research On Application Of Scaffolding Instruction In English Grammar Teaching In Senior High School

According to Modern Language Teaching, grammar is the fifth skill after listening, speaking, reading andwriting (Larsen-Freeman,2003), thus, its importance is obvious. However, the current situation of Englishgrammar teaching in senior high school in China is not as effective as we expected. Many teachers always teachEnglish grammar in a traditional way of "teachers explain and students practice‖, generally applying the singleteaching method of "teacher as the center, imparting knowledge as the purpose‖, not attaching any importance tothe participation of students. Students generally feel it is boring in grammar teaching and they are not interestedin grammar learning. Therefore, how to change the traditional grammar teaching method of "simple impartingand passive acceptance", and how to enhance the students‘subjective role during learning English grammar arecommon problems for most English teachers and foreign language researchers. This thesis aims to build anappropriate scaffold for grammar teaching mode on the basis of such theories as Constructivism, Vygostky‘sSocio-cultural Theory and Zone of Proximal Development Theory, and to verify whether scaffolding grammarinstruction is an effective teaching model, that is, could it solve these two problems to a large extent?Based on the research background and purpose, the research questions are summarized as follows:1) Is thescaffolding instruction more effective in improving the senior learners’ English grammatical ability?2) Can thescaffolding instruction help students have a better understanding of learning English grammar?3) What are thelearners’ attitudes towards the scaffolding instruction? Experimental research, questionnaires and interview areemployed in this thesis. The students were selected from two classes of Grade one in Dong Fang Hong MiddleSchool, Ding Xi city, Gansu Province as experimental participants. The teaching experiment has been carried outfor nearly two months. The author took scaffolding instruction in the experimental class and traditional PPPgrammar teaching approach was employed in the controlled class. The sources of the data in this research arefrom the four tests (Senior High Entrance Examination, English Test, Pretest and Posttest) and twoquestionnaires for the students. All the collected data are analyzed by SPSS16.0. Moreover, an open interviewwas given to some students in the experimental Class with an aim to explain the research questions morepowerfully after the experiment.Through the compared results between the experimental class and the controlled class, we can find thatscaffolding grammar teaching approach can help students to learn English grammar well and it can effectivelyarouse students‘interest in learning grammar. Moreover, students‘initiative and enthusiasm are also boosted todiscuss and cooperate with group members in the process of learning grammar. And most students hold positive attitudes to the scaffolding instruction in English grammar learning from the students‘comments in the interview.However, there are some limitations in the process of research and questionnaire based survey has itsunavoidable drawbacks. The present survey, which is only a tentative exploration of application of scaffoldinginstruction in English grammar teaching in senior high school, needs to be confirmed and complemented bymore researches.