An Application Of Scaffolding Instruction Model To English Reading In Junior High School

Reading,as the main source of language input,is an important language skill.Therefore,how to improve students’ English reading ability has become a main concern of English reading teaching.However,the traditional teaching of English reading just focuses on grammar,ignoring the process of reading itself.Although many efforts have been put on English reading by teachers and students,the result is not so desirable.In order to solve this problem,the writer attempted to find an effective way which can be applied in the practice of English reading teaching.From the perspective of constructivism and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development theory,this study discusses the application of scaffolding teaching mode in middle school English reading teaching.The scaffolding teaching mode is attempts to build a set of auxiliary framework for students and help students to explore the construction of knowledge meaning independently.Teachers divide up the task of reading process according to the students’ zone of proximal development of intelligence and understanding ability.Teachers timely build a scaffold for students to improve their reading ability.The thesis has mainly adopted literature study method and empirical method.The study selects students from two classes in the seventh grade.The method of interview,questionnaire survey,pretest and posttest are employed in this research.In order to answer the following three research questions:1)The study focuses on how to find the students’ latest development area of reading ability?2)How to set up scaffold for the students according to their different reading levels?3)Could the students’ reading ability can be improved by scaffolding teaching method?The experiment lasted for a whole term,This study has achieved the expected results.The main findings are as follows:1)Through interview,questionnaire and tests,teachers can get observational data.Then students’ latest development area of understanding and intelligence can be found;2)Teachers can set up different context,situation,structure,strategies and language scaffold for students according to their different latest development areas;3)The experiment dates shows there exists significant difference between the experimental class and control class after applying different teaching reading methods.The findings indicate that scaffolding teaching mode can be effectively applied in reading teaching and can improve the students’reading ability effectively.As a result the scaffolding teaching mode can not only improve the students’ reading ability,but also play a certain role in improving English teachers’ teaching skills.