A Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To The Teaching Of College English Writing

Writing in English is a basic skill in English learning and an important way ofcommunication for college students. New college English curriculum has set concretegoals for non-English major students and CET4, an important language test fornon-English major students, also requires that students’ writing level should reach itsprescriptive level. However, many non-English major students’ writing level can not reachthe desired level and they still have many difficulties in English writing. Therefore, it is avery necessary and challenging task for writing teachers to help these students improvetheir English writing ability and motivate their interest towards English writing.Though it is well developed abroad, scaffolding instruction is a relatively freshteaching method in China. This teaching method provides a different perspective toimprove the current situation of teaching, which is directly derived from Vygotsky’s ZPDtheory (Zone of Proximal Development) and constructivism. The thesis is aimed at testingthe effectiveness of this teaching approach when it is applied to college English writingclasses.This thesis is mainly concerned with a theoretical review on scaffolding instructionand its practical application in college English writing teaching. An experiment based onthis approach is conducted in the thesis. The research questions of the experiment arelisted as follows:1. Is scaffolding instruction more effective than traditional product approach inteaching English writing?2. After the experiment, what is the students’ attitude towards scaffolding instruction?3. In which aspects can scaffolding instruction more efficiently improve students’writing proficiency?Two classes of sophomores from the Economic Management Department took part in the experiment. After the pre-test, its result showed that the two classes were basicallyat the same English writing level. Class1was assigned as the control class and Class2was assigned as the experimental class. In the experimental class, scaffolding instructionwas adopted to teach English writing while in the control class, the traditional productapproach was still used to teach English writing. Through the four-month writing teaching,students in the two classes took part in a post-test in which the differences in the writinglevel of the two classes became obvious. After the experiment, a questionnaire, aninvestigation and a face-to-face interview were also conducted in the experimental class inorder to investigate the students’ feelings and attitude towards scaffolding instruction.It can be concluded from the results of the experiment that scaffolding instruction ismore significant than the traditional product approach in improving the students’ writingability in the aspects of “communicative quality”,“argumentation”,“organization” and“linguistic appropriacy”. Through the comparison of the pre-test and post-test, it can beconcluded that scaffolding instruction is more significant in improving the experimentalclass students’ writing proficiency in “communicative quality”,“organization”,“linguisticaccuracy” and “linguistic appropriacy” than in “argumentation”. In addition, it also can bereflected from the results of questionnaire and interview that this teaching method canmotivate students’ learning interest in English writing and the majority of the studentshold positive attitude towards the scaffolding instruction.Though there are some limitations in this study, it is still expected that somefindings of this thesis can be shared with the readers and provide some suggestions forEnglish teachers willing to make some alterations in their writing teaching classes.