The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To English Writing In A Junior High School

As learning in junior high schools is an important stage to develop and improve students’ writing skills, writing teaching in junior high schools is particularly important. At present the main methods which in junior high schools tend to overemphasize the leading role of teachers in the teaching activities. As one of the core teaching models of Constructivism, the scaffolding instruction is based on the zone of proximal development(Vygotsky, 1978), and it emphasizes the subjectivity of students. So far, while abundant researches related to scaffolding instruction have been conducted in teaching each subject to EFL learners, still targeted studies on English writing teaching in junior high schools are called for and attention should be paid to some practical issues. For example, how is scaffolding instruction carried out when teaching English writing in Chinese junior high schools? What adoptions are needed when we apply the method to Chinese-English classroom? In what aspects will the teaching method improve the students’ writing ability? Will the application of the method reduce students’ writing anxiety?This study applies scaffolding instruction to English writing teaching in a junior high school in order to explore the practical effects of the scaffolding instruction in English writing teaching in junior high schools from two aspects: effects on the students’ writing scores and effects on students’ English writing anxiety. The two research questions are: 1). How does scaffolding instruction affect students’ English writing scores? 2). In what way does scaffolding instruction affect students’ English writing anxiety?Two parallel classes are chosen in Grade Nine in Weixian No.2 Middle School, Xingtai, Hebei Province to be the subjects of the teaching experiment. One is the experimental class, and the other is control class. The teaching experiment lasts four months from September to December in 2015. With the premise that other variables are controlled, the scaffolding instruction is used in the English writing teaching of the experimental class, and the product approach is used in the teaching of the control class. The data collected in this study include the students’ grades of pre-test and post-test and the questionnaires. By using SPSS19.0, the results show that the scaffolding instruction used in English writing teaching in junior high schools can improve the students’ writing scores and reduce the students’ writing anxiety.