A Study On The Effectiveness Of Scaffolding Teaching In Junior High School English Writing Teaching

For many junior middle school students,English writing is important in all kinds of entrance examinations like entrance examination for senior high school and college.It's also significant for their future development in English learning.However,the current situation of junior middle school English writing is not optimistic.On the one hand,the students don't have sufficient confidence and high interest in English writing.On the other hand,the teachers don't give sufficient instruction in English writing and use the inappropriate ways.Based on the present situation of English writing teaching in junior middle school,some experts,scholars and teachers adopt some new language teaching theories or language teaching modes at home and abroad in order to make some significant theoretical and practical explorations.Among them is Scaffolding Teaching Mode which was based on the social constructivism and developed under the shadow of Vygotsky's “zone of proximal development”.This mode emphasizes that teachers should follow “student-centered” classroom teaching mode and construct a learning scaffold according to the zone of proximal development and characteristics of students.It helps students to construct knowledge by themselves and do meaningful leaning,which can finally improve students' English writing level.This teaching mode has been applied home and abroad by many researchers and improved effective while the study is comparatively limited in the writing teaching for junior middle school students.It's hoped that this study can have a positive impact on students' English writing scores.In the process of the study,the related theory about scaffolding is combed and summarized,which lays foundation for further study;then,on the basis of scaffolding theory and the reality in this school,the research questions are put forward.Class 3 and Class 10 are selected as the Experimental class and the controlled class respectively.After 12 weeks' teaching practice,the data from the pre-test and post-test is analyzed with SPSS V22.0 to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the scaffolding theory applied in junior middle school English writing teaching.It is found that the scaffolding teaching mode can improve students' writing scores more significantly than the traditional mode.Thus,it is hoped this research canprovide some suggestions and references for junior middle school English writing teaching and offer some implications for future researchers;in view of author's limited knowledge,the designs and conclusions also need further exploration and improvement.