An Empirical Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To The Teaching Of College English Writing

As an important manifestation of communicative competence and integrated skills,writing plays a crucial part in English learning.However,for most Chinese college students,especially non-English major students,their overall writing performance is not so good.And English writing teaching has not achieved as many effects as it has expected.With the deepening of college English teaching reform,it‘s necessary to explore an effective teaching approach in college English writing.Scaffolding instruction,as one of three instruction modes based on constructivism theory,has been widely applied to teaching in western countries,but there are only a few researches about scaffolding instruction in China at present.According to this situation,this thesis tries to apply scaffolding instruction into college English writing teaching in order to testify the feasibility and effectiveness of scaffolding instruction in the teaching of college English writing.Sixty non-English major freshmen were chosen as the research subjects who were from Xi‘an Polytechnic University.They were divided into two classes.Thirty subjects are in experimental class and thirty subjects are in control class.About one semester‘ teaching experiment was conducted both in the two classes.And traditional teaching approach was used for control class while scaffolding instruction was conducted in experimental class.To be concrete,this thesis adopted quantitative and qualitative methods,that is,questionnaires,writing tests and interview.By software 21.0,the results were analyzed to explore three research questions:(1)what is the current situation of college non-English major students‘ English writing learning?(2)What is the effect of scaffolding instruction when it is applied to the teaching of college English writing? In which aspect(s)can it improve students‘ English writing level?(3)What are the students‘ views towards scaffolding instruction in EC after the application of scaffolding instruction to the writing teaching?The results are as follows: first,the current situation of college non-English major students‘ overall English writing level is not good.Students use writing strategies in English writing less.At the same time,they have many difficulties in the dimensions of content,grammar,organization,wording and mechanics.Second,based on the results from comparative analysis,scaffolding instruction can effectively improve students‘ writing performance,especially in the aspects of content,grammar,organization and mechanics.Third,after the experiment,a great number of students hold a positive view toward scaffolding instruction.They deem that scaffolding instruction can motivate their interest in English writing learning,improve their confidence in English writing learning and enhance the communication and cooperation among classmates.In a word,according to the study,it is feasible and effective to apply scaffolding instruction into the teaching of college English writing.