An Applied Study On The Reading-to-Write Approach Based On Scaffolding Theory In English Writing Teaching In Rural Junior High School

Writing plays a significant role in English learning in junior high school.The ultimate goal of English learning is to develop students’ comprehensive abilities to use English.Reading,as a vital means of language input,has a critical effect on the improvement of writing skills.However,during the internship,the author found that English writing teaching in rural junior school faces many problems.Firstly,the students lack interest and confidence in English writing.And the students have some problems of lack of vocabulary,a lot of grammatical mistakes,monotonous sentence patterns,dull contents,and disordered logic.Secondly,the teachers are poor in the understanding of theory of writing teaching and systematic teaching methods,so the teachers’ guidance for writing is limited to leading the students to recite the model composition and to mark the composition.Thirdly,due to the pressure of senior high school entrance examination,time for writing is limited.In order to improve these situations and put forward some feasible suggestions,based on the scaffolding theory,linguistic input hypothesis and output hypothesis,the author tries to utilize reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory in English teaching to promote the effect of writing in rural junior high school.The present study mainly emphasizes on the following three questions:(1)Does the reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory have a positive effect on improving the rural students’ ability of writing?(2)In what aspects does the reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory influence the rural students’ English writing ability?(3)What are the attitudes of rural junior high school students towards the reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory? The author adopts the method of experimental analysis to carry out the research.The study is conducted in two parallel classes of Grade three in Huang Huadian junior high school in Xiuyan.One is experimental class and the other is controlled class.The participants consist of 87 students and there are 44 in the controlled class and 43 students in the experimental class.In the process of the experiment,the researcher applied the reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory in the experimental class,while the traditional teaching method was employed in the controlled class.The experiment lasts one semester.After the experiment,the collected data were analyzed with SPSS 22.0.At the same time,students’ compositions were analyzed from several aspects.Before and after the experiment,questionnaires and interviews were used in the experimental class to inquire into the students’ attitudes towards reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory and English writing.The results of this study are as follows: Reading-to-write approach based on scaffoldingtheory is effective and has a significant effect on improving students’ English writing level in the aspects of vocabulary,grammar and content in rural junior high school.The students have a positive attitude towards the reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory and hope to continue to use it in the writing teaching in the future.The reading-to-write approach based on scaffolding theory has developed the interest and confidence of rural junior high school students in English writing and has changed their attitude towards English writing.This study also brings some implications to practical teaching.Reading and writing can be combined appropriately in rural high school English teaching.The teachers need to provide proper scaffolding to the students and cultivate the students to apply the knowledge they have acquired in reading to their writing.