An Application Of Scaffolding Instruction Model To English Listening Teaching

Listening as a primary part among the five macro English learning skills is significant in the second language acquisition. Therefore the improving of listening proficiency has been the focus of the English learning especially after the publishing of the New Curriculum Requirements in 2011. The New Curriculum Requirements emphasize the enhancing of junior high school students’ comprehensive capabilities of applying English especially the listening and speaking capability. It means that the junior students must discover an appropriate listening teaching method to instruct the students to enhance their English listening proficiency, while the conventional method can not resolve such problems.Scaffolding Instruction Model as a teaching method dates from Vygotsky’s socio-cultural and zone of proximal development(ZPD),when it was applied figuratively to refer to the instruction and assistance offered by the teachers and the peers(Wood, Bruner, 1976). Scaffolding is a term applied in the architecture while a new constructing project begins and it often needs scaffolds out of the main body of the buildings so that they can facilitate the construction. In the Scaffolding Instruction Model, a more knowledgeable or capable person offers the scaffolds and assistance in learning. The Scaffolding Instruction Model plays the part in listening teaching as a specialist offers temporary support to students to“help bridge gap between what the learners know and can do and what the learners need to accomplish in order to succeed at a particular learning task”(Vygotsky, 1978). Therefore, I attempt to use the Scaffolding Instruction Model to the junior English teaching curriculums to find an efficient method to enhance junior high school students’ listening proficiency, and the fruit of the research will supply a better understanding of Scaffolding Instruction Model.In this thesis I presume that the Scaffolding Instruction Model can enhance learners’ listening proficiency effectively, and in order to testify the hypothesis, the author did a two-month teaching experiment. The subjects of the experiment are 75 the third year of junior school students from two classes in DaTong city. By pre-test and pre-questionnaire, I came to a conclusion that their listening proficiency and problems existing in English listening were at the similar level. The author chose one of the two classes as the experiment class at random and the other class was the control class naturally. During the experiment, The Scaffolding Instruction Model was applied in the experiment class while the conventional method used in the control class.After the experiment, all the participants took part in post-test, the results show that both the control class and the experiment class have made progress, however, comparing the control class, the experiment class made greater progress. This result also supplies an effective and appropriate approach for teachers in listening teaching. From the interview, most students believe that the new teaching method can trigger their listening interest.