The Experimental Research On Application Of Scaffolding Instructional Pattern To English Reading Teaching In Rural Senior High Schools

Reading is an important way of learning English and reading ability is one of the four basic skills. Because of the influence of the traditional teaching concept and other factors,English reading teaching mostly depends on the teachers’ explanation and students’ notes in rural high school at present, which results in the students’ lack of reading practice as well as lower interest in English. Although most of English teachers are aware of the importance of reading teaching, they are used to using the traditional teaching model to organize their reading class. The disadvantages of traditional mode lie in spending much time emphasizing grammar, vocabulary in the article, and the interpretation of the surface meaning while ignoring the students’ ZPD and the penetration of cultural background.However, for lack of relevant background knowledge and reading strategies, senior school students often meet with difficulties in reading some material. That is why although many students spare no effort to learn English, their reading competence can’t be improved greatly. Therefore, it is urgent to solve the problem of how to improve the rural senior high school students’ English reading ability.From the real reading level of students and current situation of rural English reading teaching, on the basis of predecessors’ research, the study is carried out to analyze and discuss the application and effectiveness of the model explore and then how to apply scaffolding teaching model to the senior school English reading teaching.Scaffolding instruction is one of the core concept of teaching modes under the concept of constructivism, which was based on the theory of the “Zone of Proximal Development ” that was come up with by famous Soviet Union psychologist Vygotsky,taking the students as center and teachers as assistor. In order to help students finish study tasks and contract the sense of knowledge, teachers can build a set of appropriate scaffolds and create specific situation. There are five basic procedures of scaffolding instruction, including providing scaffolds, entering the situation, independent explorations, co-operative learning and effect assessment. According to the students’ learning intelligence and the ZPD of students’ reading comprehension, appropriate scaffolds are set up properly so that complicated tasks can be divided into ordinary ones to improve students’ English reading competence.Three research questions are included in the study: 1)Will the application of scaffolding instruction be more beneficial to the improvement of the students’ English reading proficiency ? 2)Will Scaffolding Instruction be more helpful to improve students’ English reading ability of autonomous learning ?3)Will the employment of the scaffolding instruction stimulate students’ interest more greatly than traditional reading instruction ? A teaching experiment was conducted from July, 2014 to December, 2014 in Pingchuan High School of Xingguo. Two parallel classes of Grade 2 were respectively selected as control classes and experimental class, which were taught by the writer. The two classes are similar to each other in the sex ratio, classroom discipline, academic record and other aspects. Test, questionnaire and interview were used to collect research data. The data were analyzed by using SPSS 19.0 to study the feasibility of scaffolding instruction in senior English reading classes. The results of the teaching experiment proves that the application of scaffolding instruction to senior English reading teaching is feasible and effective, which also contributes to the improvement of students’ autonomous learning ability and makes students more confident. It also indicates that scaffolding instruction is popular among students and teachers.