An Experimental Study On The Impact Of Scaffolding Instruction On Reducing Senior High School Students' English Writing Anxiety

Anxiety,being an important affective factor that influences foreign language study,has attracted the awareness of many researchers.Many researches were conducted to find effective ways to reduce learner's foreign language anxiety.In traditional English classes of senior high school,the students suffer a relatively high level of writing anxiety when writing in English.Based on constructivist theory and the concept of ZPD(the zone of proximal development),the author adopted scaffolding instruction to explore the effects scaffolding instruction has on reducing students' writing anxiety.The aim of this study is to explore the following two questions:(1)Can scaffolding instruction reduce senior high school students' English writing anxiety?(2)What are the effects of writing anxiety on senior high school students' English writing performance? The author chose two intact first grade senior classes in a high school in Jiangmen to conduct a teaching experiment: Class 11 being the experimental group and Class 12 the control group.The author adopted the traditional method(the product approach)in the control group(CG)and scaffolding instruction in the experimental group(EG),that is: offering the scaffolding,entering the scene,individual work,collaborative work and evaluation.The teaching experiment lasted twenty weeks.The instruments of the study included Second Language Writing Apprehension Inventory(SLWAI),writing tests,and the interview.All the data were processed with the help of Statistical Package for the Social Science(SPSS 16.0).Through Independent Samples t-test,the author got the P-value =.868>0.05,p=.210>0.05.The results showed that the students' writing anxiety and writing performance were at the same level before the teaching experiment.The comparison and analysis of the samples before and after the teaching experiment showed that: scaffolding teaching could reduce the overall writing anxiety(p<0.05).To compare the writing scores of the experimental and control group of the post-test,the author used the t-test for independent samples.The P value was lower than p=0.05,showing there was statistically significant difference of writing scores between the experimental group and control group.The interview of 30 students who were randomly selected showed that the students' attitude towards scaffolding instruction was positive.The study indicates that scaffolding instruction can reduce senior high school students' writing anxiety;along with English writing anxiety alleviated,students' English writing performance can be improved.The study implies that English teacher should realize the impact of writing anxiety on writing performance.Therefore,it is of great importance to adopt effective teaching method to reduce students' writing anxiety and thus improve their writing performance.