An Experimental Study Of The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To Senior School's English Reading Class

As one of the four basic skills in English learning,English reading is also an effective tool to obtain information and a main way to develop student' English learning and language application ability.Therefore,how to improve students' reading ability has become an important issue in English Teaching in senior high schools.However,there are still some problems in practical English teaching.Teacher's teaching concept has been outdated.Students lack dexterous reading strategies.As a result,the teaching of English reading is not satisfactory.Facing with this situation,this paper tries to find an effective teaching method which can be applied to the actual teaching of English reading.Bruner(1978)defines “scaffolding instruction” from Vygotsky's ideas as a metaphor for the conceptual framework.Its essence is to use the conceptual framework as a scaffold in the learning process.The theoretical basis of scaffolding instruction is Vygotsky's “Zone of Proximal Development” theory.Vygotsky(1934)defines the zone as “the gap between actual and potential levels of development,which is determined by the ability to solve problems independently,and the ability to solve problems under the guidance of adults or in collaboration with more capable partners.” According to Vygotsky,people's advanced psychological functions are often regulated by external culture at first,and then gradually internalized into the psychological tools of learners' minds.Metacognitive strategy is a typical learning strategy put forward by John Hurley Flavell(1976),which refers to the effective monitoring and control of students' cognitive process and results.Metacognitive strategies control the flow of information,monitor and guide the cognitive process,including planning strategies,monitoring strategies and adjustment strategies.Monitoring strategy is to evaluate and feedback the results and shortcomings of cognitive activities in time according to cognitive goals,to correctly estimate the degree and level of achieving cognitive goals,and to evaluate the effects of various job-taking actions and strategies according to the criteria of effectiveness,including tracking attention while reading,selfquestioning materials,and monitoring their own speed during examinations and time.Di Vesta,Hayward and Orlando(1979)used cloze filling method to distinguish two understanding monitoring tendencies in the study: RT(Running Text)strategy based on inference and ST(Subsequent Text)strategy based on subsequent information.The experiment is attested by test papers and questionnaires.There are two research questions:(1)Can reading learners improve their accuracy rate of reading from scaffolding instruction?(2)Can scaffolding instruction improve students' running text strategy and subsequent text strategy?Chapter I mainly introduces the research background and research motivations and significance.At present,there are a series of problems in senior high school English reading class,such as students' lack of interest in reading comprehension and their inability to use reading strategies.Scaffolding instruction can help students gradually improve their English reading level by building scaffolds.Scaffolding instruction originates from Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development.By building reasonable scaffolds,students can make progress in English reading.Chapter II mainly introduces the research on scaffolding instruction both in China and abroad.Scaffolding instruction originated in the former Soviet Union and has been studied theoretically in the world.In China,scaffolding instruction has been applied to the teaching of different subjects.In English reading comprehension teaching,scaffolding instruction can help students solve the difficulties encountered in reading comprehension through “scaffolding”.Chapters III and IV are research design and data analysis.In an ordinary middle school in Shijiazhuang,two parallel classes were tested at the same time.One class was designated as the experimental class(EC)to carry out the scaffolding instruction;the other class was designated as the control class(CC)to implement the traditional teaching method.Pre-test and questionnaire survey were conducted before the experiment was carried out,and the results were analyzed by SPSS19.0.It was found that the initial level of the two classes was not much different.After more than three months of teaching experiment,the post-test and questionnaire survey were conducted.The results of the post-test are also analyzed by SPSS 19.0 software.It can be found that after more than three months of teaching process of scaffolding instruction,the correct rate of reading comprehension in the experimental class is higher than that in the control class.The results of the questionnaire survey show that in the use of reading strategies,the experimental class uses reading strategies more frequently and skillfully than the control class.Chapter V is the conclusion.Scaffolding instruction is of great help to students in reading comprehension.Students can improve their use of reading strategies through teachers' reasonable scaffolding.But at the same time,in the course of the experiment there are also a series of problems such as some students can not actively participate in.