An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Peer Scaffolding On Senior Two Students' English Writing Anxiety

As a key emotional factor affecting foreign language learning,anxiety has become the focus of many researchers.Researchers are trying to find effective ways to reduce the anxiety of foreign language learners.In senior high school English teaching practice,students usually show higher anxiety during the writing process.On the basis of Constructivist Theory and Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development,by consciously increasing the peer scaffolding instruction,this research aims to reduce senior two students' English writing anxiety.In order to explore whether or not increasing the use of peer scaffolding in senior two English classes may reduce students' English writing anxiety and the characteristics of such influence of peer scaffolding,this study adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methods to investigate 122 senior two students from two intact classes in a senior high school.Through classroom observation,teaching experiments and questionnaire surveys,the results show that:(1)Peer scaffolding do occur in senior two English writing class,which includes the following seven types: “recruitment”,“vocabulary support”,“viewpoint support”,“peer correction”,“task simplification” and “direction maintenance”.However,the current situation of the use of peer scaffolding is not satisfactory both qualitatively and quantitatively.(2)Senior two students' English writing anxiety is at a moderately higher level,somatic anxiety and cognitive anxiety are at a medium level,and avoidance behavior is at a medium high level.(3)Increasing the use of peer scaffolding can reduce senior two students' English writing anxiety.(4)The impact of peer scaffolding on writing anxiety shows some characteristics,and different types of peer scaffolding have different impact on writing anxiety.“Recruitment” can greatly reduce “somatic anxiety” and “vocabulary support” is the most influential factor in reducing “avoidance behavior” and “cognitive anxiety”.This study shows that increasing peer scaffolding can reduce senior two students' English writing anxiety.In addition,this study proposes some effective suggestions to the use of peer scaffolding,which aims at providing some inspirations for reducing senior high school students' English writing anxiety.