An Experimental Study On The Application Of Scaffolding Instruction To Oral English Teaching In Vocational College

An important form of language activity is oral, speaking is also one of the basic skills of language communication. As is known to us, cultivating language communication ability is very important in English teaching of vocational college. As China’s foreign exchanges become more frequent, all kinds of industries are globalized, nowadays the demand for the full range of English talents is increasing, and the employment markets also put forward clear demands of the graduates’ English communicative competence in vocational college. However, vocational students’ oral English communication ability is generally weak; most of them cannot meet the requirements of the employers. Their basic English is very poor, the students are not active in speaking. What’s more, the English teachers’ teaching ideas are old; they lay too much emphasis on language knowledge, but pay little attention to cultivating students’ oral communicative ability. Vocational English classroom efficiency is not high. As for the current situation of vocational English teaching, the author would try to put "scaffolding instruction" into vocational oral English teaching in order to investigate the effectiveness of this method, and improve vocational students’ oral English ability.Scaffolding instruction is based on Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, Constructivism and Social-cultural Theory. With the help of teaching situation, cooperation discussion, and evaluation of teaching activity, it increasingly transfers the learning task to students to finish the learning task, stimulates learners’ interest in the related tasks, and forms a process of meaning construction of knowledge. Though there are many scholars who has carried on research on scaffolding instruction at home and abroad, the empirical research especially on oral English teaching in vocational college is less. Therefore, it is very necessary to do this research in vocational college.The study lasted six months: from early July 2014 to the end of December 2014. The subjects are 80 students from two classes of Grade 2 in Lvliang College. The main focus of the study is to prove whether Scaffolding Instruction can effectively stimulate vocational students ’oral English interest; whether it can effectively improve the students’ oral English communication ability. One class is the experimental class, which used "Scaffolding Instruction" in oral English teaching; the other is the control class, which used the traditional teaching method. The author conducted two oral tests in the two classes before and after the experiment, and used SPSS for quantitative analysis of the oral test scores. At the same time, the author also conducted two questionnaires and one interview in the experimental class, and did quantitative and qualitative data analysis for the results of two surveys.The results gained from the experiment show that: the scaffolding instruction is an effective method to stimulate the vocational students’ interest in oral English learning and improve the students’ oral communication ability. The implications gained from the study show that teachers in vocational college should pay more attention to cultivate the oral English communication ability of students, encourage students to solve the problem by themselves, and provide scientific and reasonable scaffolds for students to construct knowledge and overcome the learning obstacles.