An Empirical Study Of Scaffolding Instruction In Senior English Grammar Teaching

English is one of the most important and commonly used tools of communication. It is becoming more and more popular among people with the rapid development of society and frequency of communication. Grammar learning is an essential part of English learning. For English learners, it is very important to know the grammatical rules.The research attempts to investigate whether scaffolding instruction has an effect on improving senior school students’ English grammar competence and helping them to be more active, interested and confident in English grammar learning. This thesis focuses on the empirical research, based on the purposes of improving students’ English grammar level and forming their appropriate attitudes toward English grammar learning. On the bases of constructivism and Zone of Proximal Development theory, an18-week empirical research in No.4Middle School, Zhuzhou City, Hunan Province was conducted. The subjects involved in the experiment are74students from two classes in Senior One-Class1310, the Experimental Class, and Class1311, the Control Class. The Experimental Class adopted the scaffolding grammar instruction while the Control Class adopted the traditional grammar instruction in the learning of attributive clauses and some tenses. Through the experiment, the current study tries to answer the following two questions:1. Does scaffolding instruction have an effect on improving senior school students’ English grammar competence?2. Does scaffolding instruction have an effect on helping students to be more active, interested and confident in English grammar learning? In order to get the answers to the above mentioned questions, the researcher has conducted a grammar competence pre-test and a post-test in the Control Class and an interview, a pre-questionnaire, a post-questionnaire, a pre-test and a post-test in the Experimental Class. The collected data has been processed by SPSS20.0. The findings of the study are summarized as follows:1. Scaffolding instruction is effective to English grammar teaching in senior schools and does make significant difference to the English grammar competence of the students.2. Scaffolding instruction urges students to be more active, interested and confident in studying English grammar.To sum up, this thesis presents an empirical research on scaffolding instruction in senior English grammar teaching. The research results demonstrate that scaffolding grammar instruction has been effective in improving the students’grammar competence and in helping the students to be more active, interested and confident in learning English grammar. The research has three characteristics. Firstly, scaffolding instruction has been successfully carried out in English grammar teaching in senior school. Secondly, the experiment has verified the feasibility and validity of improving students’English grammar competence through scaffolding instruction. Thirdly, the methods and strategies for applying scaffolding instruction into English grammar teaching have been verified to be effective and the pedagogical implications for future teaching have been proposed.