Scaffolding Instruction In EFL Reading Teaching In Vocational School

The teaching of English reading is a very important part in Vocational Schools. Improving students’ reading competence is one of the objectives of English teaching. However, we find some problems in the present English teaching in Vocational Schools in our country..English learners face many problems in reading process as well. They lack interest and motivation, lack vocabulary, lack prior culture knowledge and reading skills, which will prevent them from improving their reading ability. In order to solve these problems, the teacher should seek a way to train students and stimulate them to be involved in reading so as to guide them to conduct an active and effective reading. As a member of foreign language teaching theories, scaffolding theory is highly valued not only for its theoretic value but also for its wide application.Scaffolding Instruction, which was originated from the studies of Vygotsky who put forward the “Zone of Proximal Development”. which fully considers the differences of students. It helps students to fulfill the learning tasks and achieve meaning construction by setting up scaffolds and specific situations. The model of scaffolding instruction sets up scaffolds opportunely according to students’ ZPD. Scaffolding Instruction divides the task of reading into five subsections: offering the scaffold, entering situation, independent exploration, cooperative study and evaluation. which enhance students’ English reading ability. It also provides a good guidance for Vocational School teachers to organize English reading classes.There are three study questions in the study: 1) Can application of Scaffolding Instruction to Vocational school English reading classroom improve students’ reading comprehension? 2) Can application of Scaffolding Instruction to Vocational school reading classroom affect students` reading strategies? 3) What is the students` attitude of Scaffolding Instruction in the experiment class? An experiment was carried out during the period from September, 2013 to January, 2014. Two intermediate classes of grade two from Jin Chang Vocational School were selected as control class and experiment class. The author collected data by the means of tests, questionnaires and interviews and analyzed data by using SPSS 18.0 to study the feasibility of scaffolding instruction in Vocational school English reading classes.The results indicate that scaffolding instruction is helpful to enhance the students’ reading proficiency. It improves students’ reading strategies. Students held positive attitudes towards the scaffolding instruction of reading, and believe that scaffolding instruction is a teaching method which is popular with the students.