An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Peer Scaffolding On Senior One Students’ English Writing

Writing,as one of the five basic language skills for English learners,plays an irreplaceable role in interpersonal communication and expression,which is also an indispensable component in the senior high school English teaching activity.However,the situation of senior high school English writing teaching is not satisfying.Teachers in the traditional teaching mostly ignore the interaction of students and directly dominate the most part of writing classes,which is difficult for students to improve their writing competence and aggravates students’ writing anxiety.Students become less interested in writing and even try to avoid writing.Therefore,it is of great importance to explore an effective method to refine senior high school English writing teaching.The peer scaffolding based on the theory of Zone of Proximal Development,which emphasizes the assistance of learners through interaction when solving problems or finishing tasks,is a newly emerging type of scaffolding instruction.In recent years,the studies on scaffolding mainly revolve around the role of teacher scaffolding and peer scaffolding’s influence on college students.There are still relatively few empirical studies of peer scaffolding specifically targeting middle school students,especially senior high school students in their English writing class.The study aims to apply peer scaffolding to the senior one English writing teaching,trying to explore whether peer scaffolding is able to effectively improve English writing competence and alleviate English writing anxiety of senior one students.The participants are 110 senior one students from two classes in the senior high school where the author interned.The two classes are randomly divided into the experimental class and the control class.Students in the experimental class are involved in the writing teaching with the application of peer scaffolding.While the control class keeps the traditional writing teaching.The study mainly puts forward the three research questions:(1)What is the current situation of the use of peer scaffolding in senior one students’ English writing class?(2)Does peer scaffolding affect senior one students’ English writing competence? If yes,how does it affect students’ writing competence in terms of language,content and structure?(3)What is the effect of peer scaffolding on senior one students’ English writing anxiety?Through a three-month teaching experiment,with the qualitative and quantitative analysis of tests,questionnaires and interviews,results are as follows:(1)At present,the use of peer scaffolding in senior one students’ English writing class needs to be improved.In particular,it is necessary to increase the peer scaffolding in providing vocabularies and controlling frustration.(2)Peer scaffolding has a positive effect on improving senior one students’ English writing competence.Specifically,it can effectively enhance students’ language use in writing but the effect on content and structure is not obvious.(3)Peer scaffolding can effectively reduce the overall writing anxiety of senior one students in English writing,among which the effects on cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety are more significant,but has no obvious effect on avoidance behavior.The study confirms that peer scaffolding is able to help senior one students improve their English writing competence and reduce their writing anxiety.At the same time,this method benefits students from shaping a positive writing attitude and cultivating habits as well as learning autonomy in writing.In addition,the study puts forward several suggestions for the application of peer scaffolding in English writing teaching and also puts forth prospects for future research.