Research On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction In English Reading Teaching In Senior High Schools

With the rapid development of Globalization,the necessity to understand and communicate in English is significantly increased.Reading is classified as one of the basic language skills which have continued to gain popularity over the years.One of the main goals of the English teaching in most senior high schools is to improve the ability of students' English reading.Some teaching models including the top down model,the interactive model and the bottom up model have been constantly applied,all of which have their distinct advantages.However,students continue to experience reading difficulties with their English.This means that it is of vital importance to investigate on a feasible and efficient English reading teaching model.According to the Zone of Proximal Development put forward by Vygotsky,the paper tries to apply the theory to senior high school English reading classes to explore a new reading teaching model based on the scaffolding instruction.This thesis focuses on two main research questions that were investigated in depth,they are: 1)Can the scaffolding instruction improve the students' autonomous learning ability? 2)Is the scaffolding instruction effective in improving the reading ability of senior high school students?The 85 respondents that were investigated in this research belong to two intact classes in Hexian No.2 high school in Anhui province.The class that was designated randomly as an experimental class consisted of 45 students while the other class which consisted of 40 students was chosen randomly as the control class.A pre-questionnaire and pretest were conducted in the pre-experiment stage.In the application of this method,the experimental method was employed in which the experimental class was taught using the scaffolding instruction while the remaining students of the control class were taught using the traditional method.In the post experimental stage,a post-questionnaire,post-test and interview were carried out,aiming to measure the students' reading awareness based on scaffolding instruction and how effective the scaffolding instruction is.The software that was used to analyze the data collected is SPSS 17.According to the results of this study,the scaffolding instruction is positively related with the students' improved autonomous learning ability and increased English reading ability and has proved to be superior to the traditional teaching models.Therefore,it could be employed in senior high school English reading teaching so as to promote students' reading ability.