A Study On The Influence Of Scaffolding Instruction On Senior High School Students' English Reading Anxiety And Reading Performance

Reading has always been playing a vital role in English learning.It is of great importance to strengthen English reading teaching and help students improve their reading ability in senior high school.However,grammar-translation reading teaching method puts more emphasis on students' achievements and pays less attention to their reading anxiety.Scaffolding Instruction,which is different from that,attaches importance to students'principal roles and teachers' guidance for students.Although Scaffolding Instruction and reading anxiety both have aroused the attention of many scholars,there are few empirical studies on the application of Scaffolding Instruction to senior English reading teaching at home and fewer studies on that to reading anxiety.Therefore,the author combined Scaffolding Instruction with senior high school English reading and put forward the following three research questions:(1)How does Scaffolding Instruction influence senior high school students'English reading anxiety?(2)How does Scaffolding Instruction influence senior high school students'English reading performance?(3)What's students'attitude towards Scaffolding Instruction?In order to answer the above three research questions,the author conducted an experiment for nearly one semester in a senior high school in Dongguan City,Guangdong Province from March to July in 2018.In this study,the author adopted three research instruments containing questionnaire,test and interview,and discussed the influence of Scaffolding Instruction on senior high school students'English reading anxiety and reading performance.Two art classes of grade one were chosen as research subjects.The class which is made up of 43 students was the control class(CC)and the one which consists of 44 students was the experimental class(EC).Before the experiment,students in the two classes completed Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale and pretest;during the experiment,the author taught EC students reading under Scaffolding Instruction while taught CC students reading under grammar-translation teaching method;after the experiment,students in the two classes completed the same Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale and post-test and later the author conducted a semi-structured interview on 12 students who are from the experimental class.After collecting all the data,the author analyzed them using SPSS 17.0 and got the following findings:(1)Scaffolding Instruction reduced senior high school students'English reading anxiety on the whole,especially from the perspectives of Reading Learning Difficulty and Reading Confidence Degree.According to the interview,EC students thought that the reduction of their reading anxiety mainly benefited from the relaxing atmosphere in class,gradual-increasing rate in finishing reading tasks and multiple positive feedback.(2)Scaffolding Instruction improved senior high school students' English reading performance.According to the interview,EC students pointed out that they obtained effective reading strategies,boosted their reading efficiency and increased their reading interest.(3)Students held positive attitude towards Scaffolding Instruction.Firstly,under this teaching method,they became masters of learning.Secondly,Scaffolds provided by the teacher helped them get success in self-exploration and cooperative learning.Finally,they began to conduct multiple evaluation under this kind of reading teaching method.At the same time,they gave some suggestions on its further implementation.According to the above,Scaffolding Instruction does have positive influence on reducing senior high school students' English reading anxiety and improving their English reading performance.Therefore,it can be applied to senior English reading teaching.Teachers should pay attention to the combination of Scaffolding Instruction and reading and help students reduce reading anxiety and improve reading performance gradually by offering outside guidance.At the same time,the author pointed out the limitations of this research and proposed corresponding suggestions.