A Research On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To English Reading Teaching In Rural Junior High School

Reading skills have great significance in junior high school English teaching.National English Curriculum Standard(2017)suggests that English reading teaching should pay special attention to the cultivation of students’ key competencies and develop their attitude and values,necessary qualities and key abilities.However,the traditional reading teaching ignores the main position of students and can not fully meet the needs of students’ all-round development.This study applies the“scaffolding instruction",which conforms to the trend of quality education,and it is also the measure to stimulate students’reading interest and improve their reading skills.Scaffolding instruction is developed on the basis of the zone of proximal development and constructivism learning theory.There are five steps of scaffolding instruction:setting scaffold,getting into content,independent exploration,cooperative learning and evaluation.The purpose of this paper is to verify the application of scaffolding instruction to guide English reading teaching in rural junior high schools.This paper studies the following two questions:Question 1:To what extent can the application of scaffolding instruction improve rural junior high school students’ English reading interest?Question 2:To what extent can the application of scaffolding instruction affect the English reading achievements of rural junior high school students?This study selected 90 students from the grade nine of Buchang junior high school in Dali County,Weinan City,Shaanxi Province.It took 4 months to do the experiment.(From September 1st to December 31st,2020).Class one selected as the Control class(CC)and Class two set as the Experimental class(EC),both with 45 students in the two class.The control class puts to use the traditional reading method,while the experimental class employ the scaffolding instruction method.This paper used questionnaires,tests and interviews to do the research during the process of the experiment.It is found that the scaffolding instruction made a positive stimulating role in students’English reading learning.Firstly,students’ interest in reading has promoted significantly.Secondly,in accordance with the analysis of the pre-test and post-test,scaffolding instruction has obviously improved the English reading achievements of most students in the experimental class.Therefore,scaffolding instruction is effective in English reading teaching in rural junior high schools.