An Empirical Study Of The Application Of Scaffolding Model To The Senior High School English Writing Teaching

With the globalization, English has been accepted as the world language in international communication and cooperation. It has become the language of business,science, aviation, technology, and international affairs. Speaking, listening, writing, and reading are the four basic skills that senior students should develop in English study. As an important aspect of communicative competences, writing plays a significant role in English teaching and learning. However, the improvement of senior students’ writing proficiency has been a challenge in China. It remains to be a weak point and there are many long-existing problems in current writing instruction. In order to improve teaching efficiency, this thesis tries a new approach in the English writing classes.Scaffolding is an instructional model based on Constructivism Theory and Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD). It has been proved to be effective in teaching and has been acknowledged in western countries. When introduced into China, this instructional approach has been welcomed by many Chinese scholars. But few empirical studies have been carried out, especially in English writing teaching. Recent studies focus on the theoretical analysis and appliance of Scaffolding Instruction. The empirical studies are mostly quantitative research. Scaffolding Model needs to be promoted and improved. This thesis applies Scaffolding Instruction to writing teaching cases in Chinese EFL settings to find the answers to the following questions:1) Is Scaffolding Model more effective than the traditional methods in English writing classes?2) If the Scaffolding Model works, in which aspects does it improve the students’ writing competence?3) What is the students’ attitude towards this model of instruction? Can it increase the interest of the student in English writing?4) How does the teacher situate his or her instruction in the student’s ZPD in different teaching stage?The author conducted an experiment to test the effect of Scaffolding Model in Englishwriting classes. 122 students from grade two of a senior school in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province were chosen as its subjects. In this experiment, a pre-test, a post-test, class observations, questionnaires, and open-end interviews were used to collect the data. After that, statistical analyses were conducted with SPSS(Statistical Package for Social Science), Version 17.0.The results of data analyses show that the Scaffolding Model is effective in improving the student’s writing abilities, especially in terms of "content", "language", "organization" and "vocabulary". Meanwhile this teaching approach can arouse the students’ interest in English writing. In addition, a detailed case study is made on how a teacher scaffolds her instruction in the student’s ZPD in one writing class.This study can help English teachers have a better understanding of the Scaffolding Theory and its application in writing teaching in the context of individualized instruction.The author hopes the results of the present research can provide an empirical reference for further teaching practice.