Application Of Scaffolding Instruction In English Vocabulary Teaching In Rural Senior High School

As the most widely used language in the world, English brought to the attention of the many non-English speaking countries, China is no exception. The author thought that vocabulary is a key point for senior high school English teaching in China. But the survey found that in terms of the present situation of China's rural senior high school English teaching, there are still many insufficient on the memory and the application of vocabulary for cramming teaching. In order to have an effective teaching method in English vocabulary teaching in rural senior high school, the author will use scaffolding instruction in English vocabulary teaching, which aims to help both the teachers and the students to achieve good results in vocabulary teaching. The results of the study is not only to help teachers to find effective methods in vocabulary teaching, but also this kind of method can help the students have a better way to remember words and improve their ability of using vocabulary.The thesis reviews the development of scaffolding instruction, which derives from the constructivism and Vygotsky's theory of ZPD. Constructivism emphasizes student-centered teaching, which means that students are the main body of teaching and the active construction of meaning but not the teachers. Therefore, the teacher should fully play a role of the students-centered. Meanwhile, constructivism also emphasizes situational teaching and cooperation teaching, which requires the teacher introduce the students into a real situation and let them have a cooperative learning to complete the corresponding content. Vygotsky wrote in his ZPD, social activity and cooperation activity, which can never be taught to someone else but suitable for students in their own mind to build their own understanding, are indispensible parts in learning and developing. When the students are building their own understanding, the teacher plays a role of facilitator and helper. At the same time, the thesis also reviews the application of scaffolding instruction in English vocabulary teaching at home and abroad and the current situation of vocabulary teaching in China have also been introduced. A series of studies have shown that scaffolding instruction in the application of rural senior high school English vocabulary teaching is feasible.The research consists of two phases. The first one was a 3-month experiment. Two classes of Grade Two in senior high school were chose, one class as control class and the other one as the experimental class. The scaffolding instruction was just used in the experimental class, and the control class still use the way that the teacher usually uses. After 3-month experiment, both of the two classes would get a post-test for getting a comparison between the two classes. The second one was a questionnaire to find out the change of the students'attitude and learning strategy.According to the experimental results and data analysis, it is effective to use scaffolding instruction in vocabulary class and it can be proved through the post-test of the experimental class. The results of the post-test shows that after using scaffolding instruction in vocabulary class, the students get improved not only in the aspect of memorizing more words, but also the ability of using vocabulary also get improved. The majority of the students in the experiment class also hold a positive attitude on the teaching method, and have positive thoughts on vocabulary learning strategies.