A Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction Model In Junior Middle School Students’ English Reading And Writing Teaching

The Teaching Program of English for Middle School stipulates that “composition shows the capability to express oneself and to communicate in the form of writing. One of the goals in English teaching is to help students develop elementary writing capability”. Writing is a process of output; reading is a process of input. Input is the foundation of output. Students who have sufficient language input can make language output easy. Good output makes students have a better understanding of framework and structure of English. So, in junior high schools, teachers should pay attention to cultivating students’ reading ability and writing ability. English reading and writing are basic elements of learning English well. However, the current situation of English reading and writing in junior high school is not at all satisfactory. Most of teachers still take traditional grammar teaching method. In teaching English reading and writing, teachers pay much attention to the vocabularies and expressions. This method makes students misled with wrong key points of reading a passage and writing an article. Because of lacking of vocabularies and memorizing by rote, students will find that it is difficult for them to read and write well. Students will lose interest in learning English gradually. It is urgent to change this situation.Scaffolding Instruction Model is a new teaching model based on the Constructivism and the theory of Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD). It is a new kind of teaching model that teachers provide timely and appropriate assistance when the learners are blocked by difficulties during learning and make students go through the Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD). The learners decompose the complex learning tasks with the help of adults or other more capable peers as well as relying on the concept frameworks and then accomplish these tasks. Students’ abilities to accomplish tasks independently are improved during the process. As soon as the learners have the ability of accomplishing tasks independently, the scaffolding provided by teachers and other more capable peers will be removed and then the learners will prepare for the next Zone of Proximal Development. The purpose of Scaffolding Instruction Model is to realize the construction of knowledge by setting theoretical study framework, using teaching resource and situation, arousing students’ learning interest, helping students to solve problems and developing students’ ability of autonomous study. Its effectiveness has been confirmed in many studies aboard. In teaching English, Scaffolding Instruction Model has achieved certain success which provides teachers with a new teaching method to change the situation of English reading and writing in junior middle school.In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of Scaffolding Instruction Model in teaching English reading and writing, the author does the study on the basis of Constructivism theory, the Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD), Language Input and Language Output Hypothesis. The study is carried out in Zhong Yuan Huang Gang Middle School in HeNan Province and it lasts for a semester. The subjects are two classes in Grade Seven which are taught by the author. One is the experimental class and the other is the control class. Both of the classes have 30 students. Scaffolding Instruction Model is applied in the experimental class, which is taking students as center. In the experimental class, teachers set up different kinds of scaffolding and give timely help to deal with problems independently. The traditional teaching model is adopted in the control class, which is dominated by teachers’ explanation.By using questionnaires, tests and observation as instruments,the experiment will verify two hypotheses:(1) Scaffolding Instruction Model can improve students’ reading and writing ability.(2) Scaffolding Instruction Model can stimulate students’ interest in English reading and writing. The data gathered from the experiment are analyzed scientifically by SPSS19.0 and Excel. According to the data of the research, the reading and writing ability of students in the control class and experimental class has been improved. However, there are many differences in the learning interest and performance between control class and experimental class. By analyzing the data,the author gets the following conclusions:(1)The application of Scaffolding Instruction Model can improve students’ reading and writing ability.(2)The application of Scaffolding Instruction Model can stimulate students’ interest and enthusiasm in English reading and writing.(3)The application of Scaffolding Instruction Model can strengthen students’ confidence.(4)The application of Scaffolding Instruction Model can form a habit of learning autonomously.