An Empirical Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction Model In English Writing Teaching In Senior Two

As the most widely used language in the world,English is one of the most fundamental tools for people to communicate.According to the English Curriculum Standard of Senior High School(2017 Edition),under the curriculum content of six elements,the goal of English subject is to cultivate students’ core competencies through listening,speaking,reading,viewing and writing.However,writing,as the core of students’ integrated language competence,is not satisfactory.Nowadays,traditional teaching methods are widely used and most teachers pay more attention to the language infusion and writing products rather than writing activities,writing methods and writing interests,thereby causing not so optimistic effect of writing teaching.Based on the theories of Constructivism and Zone of Proximal Development,the research adopts Scaffolding Instruction Model in English writing teaching to solve the problems of students.The word “scaffolding” first originated from the scaffolds or pillars in the construction site,where they are used for workers to climb to a higher place while building the house.Wood,Bruner,& Ross(1976)then employed this term to the field of education,which is Scaffolding Instruction.Since then its theory and practice have been concerned,studied and applied.Theoretically,Scaffolding Instruction has theoretical basis,definition,principles and stages that are recognized by the public.Empirically,Scaffolding Instruction Model has been used in a wide range of school subjects,Chinese,English,physics,politics,chemistry,math and science and so on in the field of infant education,primary schools,vocational schools,senior high schools,colleges and universities.However,in English teaching,Scaffolding Instruction is more often used in listening,speaking,reading,grammar teaching than in writing teaching,so this study attempts to explore the effectiveness of Scaffolding Instruction Model in Senior Two English writing teaching,aiming to answer the following questions:1)To what extent can Scaffolding Instruction Model improve students’ performance?2)Is teachers’ guidance on the composition structure by genre scaffolds and discourse structure scaffolds effective?3)Can interactions and oral presentations in Scaffolding Instruction enrich students’ writing content and language?This study is carried out in the Affiliated Middle School of Yuncheng University and takes 60 students from two liberal arts classes in Senior Two,of which 1803 is the control class and 1804 is the experimental class.The teaching experiment lasts for three months,or rather,eight compositions.Before the experiment,the Pre-test and Questionnaire Ⅰ are conducted in the two classes to ensure similar writing competence.During the experiment,Scaffolding Instruction Model is applied in the experimental class while the traditional teaching method in the control class.After the experiment,the Post-test and Questionnaire Ⅰ are carried out in the two classes to observe the changes.Meanwhile,Feedback Questionnaire Ⅱ is distributed in the experimental class to have a better understanding of Scaffolding Instruction.At last,all the data are sorted out and analyzed via SPSS 19.0 and EXCEL.After three months,the research shows that compared with the traditional teaching method,using Scaffolding Instruction Model can effectively improve students’ writing ability.First,students’ writing performance is greatly improved.Second,the teacher’s guidance on composition structure by genre scaffolds and discourse structure scaffolds is effective.Third,in Scaffolding Instruction interactions and oral presentations can enrich students’ writing content and language.Finally,in view of major findings,the author puts forward relevant suggestions for students and teachers,expounds the limitations of this study and makes some suggestions for the future research.