The Effect Of Years Of Teaching Experience On English Teachers’ Scaffolding Discourse In High School English Classroom Teaching

Teacher scaffolding discourse plays an important role in providing temporary support for students to improve their general language level since teacher is still the dominant character to control classroom content and activities.The previous researches have provided solid scaffolding theory and teachers’ scaffolding discourse usage with different contexts,therefore to find more usage features and influencing factors of teacher’s scaffolding discourse can enrich the research field and provide practical implications for teacher’s professional training.Based on the Scaffolding Theory under the perspective of Sociocultural Theory,The Input,Output and Interaction Hypotheses,and Classroom Discourse Analysis,this thesis intends to conduct a comparative study of teachers’ scaffolding discourse usage with different teaching years in a normal senior high school to answer the following three research questions:What is the usage condition of high school English teacher’s scaffolding discourse with different years of experience?What are the features of high school English teacher’s scaffolding discourse with different years of experience?What are the effects of teacher’s years of experience on high school English teacher’s scaffolding discourse?The study choose seven English teachers who all teach grade one in an ordinary first-level standard school and varied in teaching experience as the research participants.Teachers are divided into four groups according to their years of teaching experience,which are under 6 years,between 6-15 years,between 16-25 years,over 25 years.The thesis audio-records two reading lessons of each teacher and turns them into transcriptions,then hands out two versions of questionnaires to students and teachers respectively to get their views of teacher’s scaffolding discourse.By qualitative and quantitative analyzing the transcriptions and the outcomes of students’ and teachers’ questionnaires,the findings show that teachers in each teaching year stage have their clear preference and characteristics of their scaffolding discourse and are in different periods:Teacher in group one is in mastery stage which causes the evenly use of several scaffolding means;Teachers in group two prefer questioning since they are in the exploration stage to focus on knowing and improving students’ language level which present as the preference on using questioning;Teachers in group three are in the proficient stage which may pursue the suitable teaching style to achieve the optimal class which may cause their scaffolding discourse usage to present various personal features and incline to use feedback;Teachers in group four prefer modelling and have a lower frequency of using hints.What’s more,their teaching age makes them care more for class efficiency and puts value on the direct cognitive structuring rather than the affective domain.