A Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To English Writing In Vocational College

As an important means of language output,English writing reflects one's English language ability and communicative competence.Therefore,cultivating students' writing competence is regarded as one of the teaching objectives in vocational English teaching.However,English writing is always neglected in practical teaching and students' English learning.So,it is very urgent to explore effective methods to improve students' autonomous learning ability of writing and their writing performance in vocational college.Based on constructivism and ZDP theory,scaffolding instruction improves students' ability of probing into knowledge autonomously and helps them form the construction of knowledge by constructing appropriate conceptual framework.Nowadays,the research on scaffolding instruction is very common,but there are few empirical studies related to English writing teaching in higher vocational college.In view of this,this paper aims to apply scaffolding instruction to English writing teaching in vocational college and tries to explore the following two questions:1.Can scaffolding instruction enhance students' autonomous learning ability of writing?2.Is scaffolding instruction more effective than traditional teaching mode in improving students' writing scores?Based on the above questions,this paper attempts to combine scaffolding instruction with writing teaching for exploring a new teaching mode in English writing.The research lasts four months and selects 142 students from English business major at Jinzhou normal high school as participants.The 142 students are divided into two classes: one is the control class adopted traditional teaching mode,the other is the experimental class which applies scaffolding instruction in teaching process.Students are given two tests before and after experiment,and the scores of tests are analyzed for proving the effectiveness of scaffolding instruction.In order to get more reliable feedback from students about application of scaffolding instruction,questionnaire and interview are conducted to investigate if scaffolding instruction can improve students' autonomous learning ability of writing.At the same time,the test scores and the data of questionnaire are analyzed by SPSS,and the discussion is made on the basis of the analysis result.The result shows that scaffolding instruction is more feasible and effective than traditional teaching mode in writing teaching.The application of scaffolding instruction can effectively remedy deficiencies of traditional writing teaching,and scaffolding instruction not only improves their autonomous learning ability of writing but also enhances the students' writing scores.