An Application Of “Scaffolding Instruction” To Class Design Of Grammar Courses In Colleges

Scaffolding instruction, as one of the mature teaching models of constructivism, for its emphasis on influence of students’ past experience, draws more and more attention from the researchers and teaching staff home and abroad in recent years. The research here is to apply scaffolding instruction to English grammar course design in independent colleges, and to explore its applicability. Grammar teaching has always been a controversial topic in language teaching. The current situation is that most of the grammar class is teacher-oriented with teacher explaining all the language points and students doing a lot of drills, and then using language with the rules. The over-emphasis on explanation and demonstration by teachers constrains the creation of the students. This is quite a serious situation in independent colleges. Luckily, the more and more popular theory constructivism provides the educators with a new perspective.This research is based on “the social interaction theory” and “the zone of proximal development theory” put forward by Lev Vygotsky. First the thesis presents the literature review of grammar teaching and scaffolding instruction, and then analyzes the features of students, teachers, and teaching materials in independent colleges. The analysis helps the author come to conclude that scaffolding instruction is feasible in grammar course design in independent college and puts up with the scaffoldings that could be invited in grammar course as well as the five steps and four elements.The author designed English classes with scaffolding instruction in independent college with participants from Chongqing Nanfang Translators’ College of SISU to verify that effect of this kind of class design. In the dissertation, the class design, with the attributive clause part, will be the example to show the application of scaffolding instruction. The thesis invites quantitative and qualitative methods, and comes to the following findings based on the experiment results and questionnaire results.The two findings come out of the thesis: 1) giving scaffoldings in grammar course can help students’ better grasp of the language points; 2) it can help stimulate students’ participation and rouse students’ interest in learning. So the conclusion is reached that scaffolding instruction is positively effective in the grammar teaching in the independent colleges and has some pedagogical significance. It is for certain that scaffolding instruction and the dissertation itself are not perfect. It is hoped that the thesis could provide some reference for grammar teachers of independent colleges when designing a grammar course.