A Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To English Writing In Junior High School

As one of the ways of communication,writing plays a very important role in our lives.In High-school Entrance Examination,English writing occupies 15 points,which accounts for one-tenth of the total score of the test paper,therefore,stimulating students' interest in writing and improving students' writing ability is the top priority of English teaching.The English Curriculum Standard put forward writing requirements with 5 levels for students in Grade Nine.However,there is a big gap between the actual writing level of most students and the writing level required by the English Curriculum Standard.One of the reasons is that teachers didn't pay much attention to provide proper help to students' output process of writing.Based on the current teaching situation,it is of practical significance to introduce scaffolding teaching into the teaching of English writing.Constructivism and the Zone of Proximal Development Theory are the theoretical basis of scaffolding instruction,in with students are the main body of teaching,teachers are the guides and helpers.Teachers try to guide students to acquire independent learning ability through the help peers,to continuously cross their Zone of Proximal Development to achieve the meaningful construction of new knowledge.Two parallel classes in Grade Nine of 41 st Corps School in Kashi City are the subjects of this experimental study,in which Class 2 is the experimental class and Class 4 is the controlled class,with a total of 89 students.In order to test the feasibility of scaffolding instruction in English writing teaching in junior high school,the author puts forward the following two research questions in the 14-week experiment.1.Can scaffolding instruction improve students' ability in English writing ?2.Can scaffolding instruction stimulate students' interest in English writing ?Before the experiment,the author made statistics and analysis on the subjects' English writing scores and the results of the questionnaire with SPSS 22.0.The significant difference is not reflected in students' writing ability and writing interest based on the scores in the examination paper and the feedback from the questionnaire.After the experiment,in addition to analyze students' writing scores and questionnaire results,the author added interviews to further verify the validity of the data.Based on the results of the experiment,it can be summarized as: 1.The students' writing ability can be improved by Scaffolding Instruction.2.Scaffolding Instruction can stimulate students' interest in writing.At the same time,the results of the interview were consistent with the results of the test paper and the questionnaire.The experimental results show that Scaffolding Instruction is feasible in the English writing teaching,which not only embodies the basic curriculum concept of quality education,but also gives full play to the guiding role of teachers in teaching.Furthermore,there are some limitations in this study: 1.It's a big challenge for the author to provide proper scaffolding for each student in a large class.2.The research subject is not universal.Finally,from these limitations of the experimental research,the author put forward some suggestions for reference.