The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To English Vocabulary Teaching In Vocational Colleges

Vocabulary,as a fundamental language component,has a great impact on teaching and learning of some basic language abilities such as listening,speaking,reading,writing and translation abilities.Without sufficient vocabulary,students have no way of expressing their own ideas and understanding other people's opinions.Therefore,students are asked to master as many words as possible.However,in China,students' vocabulary level has not reached the basic requirement,especially vocational students with poor English foundation.Despite the fact that they have taken great pains in improving vocabulary level,vocational college students still make little progress.The causes mainly lie in conventional vocabulary teaching methods adopted by most teachers,which ignores the emphasis of vocabulary system and the guidance on how to learn vocabulary effectively.Therefore,it is urgent to find a kind of effective vocabulary teaching method,which can improve students' vocabulary learning strategies and enhance vocabulary level.In order to achieve the goal,Scaffolding Instruction is applied to English vocabulary teaching in vocational colleges.Scaffolding Instruction is featured by providing the scaffolding,gradually leading students to learning independently.Meanwhile,it lays emphasis on the links between the newly-gained and previous knowledge,and interaction with peers or teachers.Therefore,it is wished to solve vocational problems by forming the vocabulary system on the basics of the links between new and old knowledge and making students reflect their own learning strategies among the interaction with teachers or students.However,the previous studies at home and abroad mainly involve the aspect of reading,listening and writing in English teaching and there are only some researches on vocabulary teaching,especially the empirical research on vocational English vocabulary teaching.To prove whether scaffolding instruction has a good effect on vocational vocabulary teaching,the writer has conducted an experiment for sixteen weeks in Shandong Urban Construction Vocational College,by employing vocabulary scaffolding instruction in the experimental class while using the conventional vocabulary teaching method in the control class.In addition,vocabulary test,vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire and interview were used,guaranteeing results more reliable.Before the experiment,pre-test of students' vocabulary I level was conducted in two classes.And the questionnaire was also implemented in the experimental class.After the experiment,the post-test of vocabulary level was carried out in two classes.And the researcher conducted the post-test of the questionnaire in the experimental class.Following this,an interview was carried out among students chosen randomly in the experimental class.By above-mentioned experiment,the writer intends to answer two research questions.First,does scaffolding instruction enhance vocational students' English vocabulary level effectively?Second,is scaffolding instruction helpful to improve students' vocabulary learning strategies?By analyzing pre-test and post-test,pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire,and the interview,the writer replies to two research questions proposed before the experiment.First,scaffolding instruction can enhance vocabulary level effectively.Second,scaffolding instruction is helpful to improve students'vocabulary learning strategies.Therefore,scaffolding instruction is proved to be an effective vocabulary teaching method in vocational colleges.Based on research results,the writer puts forward suggestions for teachers and students in vocabulary teaching and learning.However,the research has some limitations for the short time of experiment,the existence of the uncontrollable variables and the writer's insufficient abilities.