An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Peer Scaffolding On English Writing Anxiety Of High School Students

Limited language knowledge and capacity are huge challenge to second language writers,who may with little sense of sociocultural knowledge,inappropriate comprehension to linguistic functions and expected responses from readers with varied cultural backgrounds.Affective factors and intrinsic motivation may hamper second language writers’ performance as well.As an indispensable output skill,writing teaching is time-consuming but has little efficiency,which has caused students to become increasingly concerned about writing in English.Writing anxiety refers to the anxious behaviors of learners in the process of writing,such as avoiding the writing task and fear of been assessed.Anxiety produces feelings of tension,fear,and chagrin.These negative emotions may directly lead learners to failure,which in turn increases learners’ tension and anxiety,then trap learners in a vicious cycle.Scaffolding instruction originates from how Constructivism sees the role of instructors and learners.Scaffolding instruction aims at helping learners to accomplish tasks that they can not accomplish by themselves through effective teacher-learner or learner-learner interactive dialogue.Current researches on scaffolding show that peers can help each other to build scaffolding to solve problems and effectively realize self-construction and second language development.Therefore,teachers can make use of peer scaffolding during teaching and adopt individualized remedial strategies to intervene students’ writing anxiety.On the current situation of students’ English writing anxiety,the research analyzes the tendency of learners to use peer scaffolding and the changes of each factor before and after the experiment.The purpose of the research is to clarify whether the use of peer scaffolding can show effectiveness on the variables of writing anxiety so as to provide empirical evidence for the intervention of teaching practice on foreign language writing anxiety.The current research targets on high school students.Questionnaire,recording,and interviews employed to solve problems goes as follows: first,the current situation of peer scaffolding and writing anxiety of high school students;second,students’ writing anxiety levels before and after the experiment;third,different types of peer scaffolding effects on different writing anxiety factors.The research finds that:(1)in high school English writing classes,students tend to rely on three types of peer scaffolding frequently: “increasing participation”,“providing vocabulary and expression” and “providing opinions”;(2)high school students have a high overall level of English writing anxiety,among which the “avoidance behavior” factor has the most prominent degree of anxiety;(3)peer scaffolding helps students to reduce the degree of English writing anxiety,but it has no significant effect on the “avoidance behavior”factor of writing anxiety.As for the correlation between different peer scaffolding functions and four factors of writing anxiety,“classroom teaching anxiety” and “correcting wrong usages”,“task maintenance”,“frustration control”;“avoidance behavior” and “frustration control”;“conceiving anxiety” and “increasing participation”,“providing words and expressions”,“providing opinions”,“correcting wrong usages”,and “explaining to simplify tasks” are all positively correlated.