A Study Of Applying Scaffolding Instruction Theory To The Continuation Writing Of High School Seniors

A new type of writing called continuation writing has been incorporated into the English test of China’s College Entrance Examination,which emphasizes the combination of reading and writing,and requires higher English reading and writing competence for students.Most students,however,lack enough motivation and enthusiasm in coping with this challenging task.In view of this situation,this study attempts to adopt the Scaffolding Instruction theory in the teaching of continuation writing,so as to effectively increase students’ reading and writing competence by changing the traditional teacher-centered teaching model to ensure students’ central position in the classroom and building appropriate scaffolds for students to guide them to construct new knowledge with the help of scaffolds.This thesis aims to explore the application of Scaffolding Instruction theory to the continuation writing for high school seniors.It tries to answer the following questions: How to apply the Scaffolding Instruction theory to the continuation writing class? Can the continuation writing classes based on the Scaffolding Instruction theory increase high school seniors’ competence in the continuation writing? Can the application of Scaffolding Instruction theory to the continuation writing classes enhance high school seniors’ interest and confidence in continuation writing?Based on related literature review,this thesis extracted a model of teaching continuation writing based on the Scaffolding Instruction theory,which mainly explores the teaching procedures in the five steps: building scaffolds,guiding students into the context,creating opportunities for students’ independent exploration,engaging students in collaborative learning and the evaluation of learning effects.Two classes of high school seniors in a middle school of Fujian Province are chosen as the research subjects,with the Scaffolding Instruction theory and the traditional teaching method employed respectively in the experimental and control classes to promote the study of continuation writing.By collecting data from the pre-test and post-test of the teaching experiment,questionnaires and interviews with both teachers and students,the research findings are presented as follows: the model of teaching continuation writing based on the Scaffolding Instruction theory can significantly increase high school seniors’ competence in the continuation writing,and help enhance students’ interest and confidence in it.