Application Of Scaffolding Teaching To English Writing In Senior High Schools

Writing is a practice of students’comprehensive skills in the study of English and it is one of the four basic skills of language learning. Writing teaching occupies an important position in English teaching. In English learning, writing is one of the most important skills for students to master. Meanwhile, the New English Curriculum has set high and concrete goals in English writing. Therefore, English writing has been emphasized much more in foreign language teaching. However, it is surveyed that English writing is the weakest part for most students in Senior High Schools, how to write a good English composition is still a problem. Thus, the thesis combines scaffolding theory with English writing practice in Senior High Schools to investigate how to teach English writing in China.Traditional English writing teaching often regards writing as a kind of practical knowledge; its focuses are the skills and methodology of writing. For instance, it focuses on the correctness and form of the grammar and syntax, and ignores the development of students’cognition, thought, interest, psychology. Constructism theory (Vygostky,1978) emphasize that students are the focus of the teaching, and students are the subject of learning process, teachers play a part as facilitators and organizers in the process of writing, students can construct knowledge actively. The essay aims at investigating English writing from scaffolding aspect to discuss whether the scaffolding can improve students’writing ability or not.Firstly, the thesis briefly introduces the background, the significance, some problems existing in Senior High Schools and the organization of the study. Then, it introduces the literature review. At the same time, it presents how to apply scaffolding teaching to English writing teaching. Next, the author uses experiment to prove that whether scaffolding is helpful to improve students’writing ability or not. The author chooses two classes to have a test. The subjects were the two class students in Grade Two in a Senior High School, Yinchuan city, Ningxia province. Class One was considered as experimental class in which scaffolding teaching was used, and there are30students in the class. Class Two served as the control class in which the traditional teaching method was used, and it has the same number as the class One. Both classes almost have the same gender proposition. Before the experiment, students have learned English for five years. During the experiment, the two classes use same reference books and exercise recourses, the difference is that in the English writing class, the scaffolding teaching mode is used in the experimental class, while the traditional teaching method is adopted in the control class. In order to make the experiment more effective and reliable, the author adopts some instruments to carry out the experiment. They are pre-test, post-test, questionnaire, and an interview. Through the analysis of the data collected after the experiment, the conclusions are showed:English writing based on scaffolding instruction can help students to solve their problems in writing, and can help students to improve their English writing ability. At last, the major findings of the research, implications for the writing teaching, limitations and suggestions of the study are showed. In addition, the author hopes that the results of the research can provide some reference for future study on scaffolding teaching in China.