| Listening as a main part among the basic language skills is extremely important in the foreign language study. Thus increasing listening competence has always been the focus of foreign language learning and teaching especially after the issue of New Curriculum Requirements by Chinese Education Department in 2004. The New Curriculum Requirements focus on the improvement of college students' comprehensive abilities in applying English especially the listening and speaking competence. This means college English teachers have to find a proper way to instruct the students in college English listening course in order to improve the students'listening proficiency, while the traditional practice mode can hardly meet such needs.Scaffolding instruction as a teaching strategy originates from Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory and his concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). While in constructivism it was used figuratively to refer to the guidance and assistance provided by the teacher and the peers (Wood, Bruner, & Ross,1976). "Scaffolding" is a term used in architecture when a new construction project starts and it always need scaffolding outside the main body of the building in order to facilitate the construction. In Scaffolding Instructional Model, a more knowledgeable or competent person provides scaffoldings or supports for the learners to facilitate their development. Scaffolding instruction plays the role in class teaching as an expert provides temporary support to learners to "help bridge the gap between what the learners know and can do and what the learners need to accomplish in order to succeed at a particular learning task" (Vygotsky,1978). Thus, I tried to apply the Scaffolding Instructional Model to the college English listening course to find out an effective way to develop and improve students'listening proficiency, and the result of the study will offer better understanding of Scaffolding Instructional Model.In this paper I assume that Scaffolding Instructional Model can improve students'listening proficiency effectively, and in order to check this hypothesis, I did a teaching experiment. First of all, I explained the significance of the study and then reported the situation of both the theoretical and practical study concerning Scaffolding Instructional Model in China and abroad.In the experimental part, the subjects of the experiment are 115 non-English major students from a university in Jilin province. Through the pre-test and pre-questionnaire, I acquired that their listening proficiency and difficulties existing in their listening comprehension were at the same level.In the following part, I conducted a 17-week teaching experiment. One of the classes was chosen as the experimental class at random, and the other one was control class. Scaffolding instructional Model was adopted in the experimental class, while the control class in the traditional method. At the end of the experiment, a post-test was conducted in both of the two classes and the results were analyzed. The post-test is to find out the correlation between Scaffolding Instructional Model and the students' listening proficiency. The collection of results of the pre-test and post-test, questionnaires and the interview was used to be sources of data. Based on the analysis of independent t-test and matching sample t-test, measurements by SPSS, it was found that, after one term training, the experimental group made great progress in listening comprehension; while the control group, though scored a little higher than that of the pre-test, did not make a significant progress. The interview following the post-test, showed their opinions toward Scaffolding Instructional Model and the traditional teaching method in their English class, which in turn could provide some valuable information for further studies. |
PDF Full Text Request