A Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction Model In Teaching Of English Reading In Middle Schools

The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education (2011) emphasizes the importance of teaching of reading and cultivating students’ reading ability. However, "teaching" and "learning" of English reading is not satisfactory in the middle schools. Based on the theories of constructivism, scaffolding instruction has received more and more attention in many teaching fields. This study is mainly to investigate the effects of applying scaffolding instruction model in teaching of English reading teaching in middle schools on improvement of students’ reading ability and development of their reading strategies.An experimental study is conducted in a middle school in Hangzhou. Two parallel classes of Grade 8 are selected as experimental class and control class. Scaffolding instruction is applied in the experimental class, whose basic procedures include providing scaffolds, creating the situation, independent explorations, cooperative learning and application of evaluation, while the control class is taught by the traditional method. In the process of the experiment, the instruments like tests, questionnaires and interviews are used to obtain the related data and results.The results of the experiment show that scaffolding instruction can improve the middle school students’ self-learning awareness and the English reading ability. Also this teaching model can help students develop their effective reading strategies.