A Study Of The Scaffolding Instruction In Oral Tourism English Teaching At Higher Vocational Colleges

Driven by the reform and open policy, tourism industry of China has been booming over the last decades. The future market of tourism calls for the high quality talents to possess a solid foundation of specialized knowledge in tourism and strong communicative ability in English language. However, the present condition of the oral tourism English teaching in higher vocational colleges is far from satisfactory. Oral tourism English is a compulsory curriculum for tourism management major, which focuses on cultivating the English communicative ability and practical skills of the higher vocational colleges students. The English levels of tourism professionals are directly relevant to the further development of tourism industry. Yet in recent years, only a few tourism talents can publicize the abundant and distinctive tourist resources and culture of China to foreign visitors in English smoothly. This tough situation puts forward higher requirements for the educators of tourism management major in teaching reform. Thus, how to satisfy the needs of the tourism market and how to train professionals with proficient English communicative competency are the most urgent tasks to the teachers of tourism management major in the current situation.Scaffolding instruction is a new teaching strategy evolved from Lev Vygotsky’s constructivism theory and formed on the foundation of his theory of the zone of proximal development(ZPD). It is appropriate and timely support set up by capable teachers or companions to facilitate students to explore knowledge independently in some certain contexts so as to improve their abilities of accomplishing learning tasks. As soon as the learners acquired the capacities, the assistance, also called scaffolding, provided by teachers would be withdrawn.However, very little empirical studies have addressed on the application of scaffolding instruction to oral English teaching in China, especially to oral tourism English teaching in higher vocational colleges. This study attempts to apply the scaffolding instruction to oral tourism English teaching in higher vocational colleges and aims to explore the efficiency and effectiveness of this new teaching method of fostering students’ oral English competence, interest and confidence of learning oral tourism English.Eighty students from grade one of tourism management major of Zhengzhou Tourism Colleges of Henan Province are selected as the research subjects of the experiment, with Class 1 chosen as the experimental class(EC) and Class 2 as the control class(CC). The students participate in this long teaching experiment which starts from September 1st, 2014 to January 7th, 2015. The author adopts scaffolding instruction in the experimental class while the traditional teaching approach is used in the control class. The author tries to confirm the feasibility of the scaffolding instruction at higher vocational colleges’ oral tourism English teaching.The study intends to handle these two questions:a. Can scaffolding instruction effectively foster students’ interest and confidence in learning oral tourism English?b. Can scaffolding instruction effectively improve students’ communicative competence in oral tourism English?In order to achieve more reliable results, the empirical research method is employed in this research. There are four research instruments, including tests, questionnaires, interview and SPSS software.The major findings of this study are as follows:a. Scaffolding instruction can effectively foster students’ interest and confidence in learning oral tourism English.b. Scaffolding instruction can effectively enhance students’ proficiency in oral tourism English.The author hopes that the conclusions of this study have some implications for oral tourism English teaching at higher vocational colleges. Certainly, there are still some defects in the study, such as limited time and inadequate participants. But it reaches its desired objectives which not only proves the feasibility of scaffolding instruction in oral tourism English teaching but also puts forward some suggestions for the future research and practice.