An Experiment Research On “Scaffolding Instruction” For English Vocabulary Teaching In High School

Vocabulary is the basic element of language, which is the backbone of the system. English vocabulary teaching in high school plays a very important role, which has a profound influence on students‘ further study. Without a good command of vocabulary language, learners can‘t improve any of the skills including listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating to a great extent. But the cramming way in high schools‘ English vocabulary teaching makes it difficult for the students to learn vocabulary efficiently. The teaching model a teacher adopting in the classroom is also of great significance on the teaching effect. How to help them to memorize, understand, as well as to use words is a very important topic. Therefore, English teachers need to select suitable teaching models to improve teaching based on their practical condition and only in this way can they fulfill the teaching mission of the new age.Based on the writer‘s English teaching experience and research. Students are more likely to give up or show less interest in English learning because of unsuccessful vocabulary learning experiences. Hence how to help students with vocabulary learning is imperative for English teachers.Scaffolding instructional model is a new teaching model based on the constructivism theory and the theory of zone of proximal development. It helps students to construct a knowledge framework and builds a bridge between the new knowledge and the old one hence students can master knowledge systematically. What is more, compared with traditional teaching model, this new teaching model gains more popularity among students and it is more acceptable by them. Scaffolding instructional model overwhelms the traditional one in many aspects, such as stimulating students‘ learning motivation, setting up their confidence as well as creating a good learning environment and so on. In this thesis, the writer is supposed to work out two questions. That is, to what extent can scaffolding instructions affect the students‘ vocabulary proficiency and comprehensive proficiency and what attitude students of experimental class hold towards scaffolding instructional model and students of control class hold towards traditional teaching model.The thesis proposes a teaching method of scaffolding instruction in high school vocabulary English —— "four & six mode", that is, six steps before class stand for defining the levels, offering scaffolds, leading into the situation, exploring independently, co-operative learning as well as effect assessment and four steps refer to pronunciation, spelling, meaning as well as usage. I assumed Scaffolding Instruction Model can improve students‘ comprehensive proficiency and vocabulary proficiency by learning vocabulary effectively, and in order to check this hypothesis, I did a teaching experiment and used SPSS 22.0 to conduct independent T-test of tests and questionnaires. The result shows that after the teaching experiment, the difference between the two classes is significant and students in experimental group make more progress, which reveals that scaffolding instructional model shows better effect in helping teachers to improve students‘ English compared with the traditional one.