Investigation Of Scaffolding Instruction On Oral English Teaching In Senior High School

The General Senior High School Curriculum Standards English(2017 Edition,2020 Revision)states the specific goal of the general senior high school curriculum English is to cultivate and develop students’ subject core competencies.Language ability,as the “core” of the English subject core competencies,aims to enable students to use spoken language to express meaning and conduct interpersonal communication effectively.The objectives and concepts of the English Curriculum Standard clarify the trend and principles of questions for senior high school English examinations,including the need to create conditions for organizing oral English examinations,for example,the EAAE for senior high school students and the CEEE should focus on students’ English comprehension and expression abilities,including their abilities to understand oral discourse,to obtain information from oral discourse,and to respond to oral discourse.It goes without saying that the importance and necessity of oral English teaching to develop the above abilities.However,there are certain gaps between the actual teaching practice and the requirements of the English Curriculum Standard,such as students’ lack of attention to oral English and teachers’ lack of awareness of the importance of oral English teaching.As the curriculum reform continues to progress,teachers are also actively exploring effective ways to improve students’ speaking ability.As one of the teaching methods highly recognized by teachers,scaffolding instruction has been mainly applied to reading and writing teaching,and relatively less in the field of listening and speaking teaching.Researches on scaffolding instruction have also ignored the key role of teaching scaffolds,and there are few researches on the application of scaffolding instruction to oral English teaching in senior high school.This study explored the current situation of scaffolding instruction applied to oral English teaching in senior high school through questionnaire,interviews,classroom observation,and oral tests,analyzed the use of scaffolds by the teacher in oral English teaching,and discussed whether scaffolding instruction can effectively improve the effectiveness of oral English teaching in senior high school.The study results indicated that the teacher commonly used eight types of scaffolds in oral English teaching: tool,question,prompt,context,example,emotion,task,and error correction.Among them,question scaffolds were used most frequently and emotion scaffolds were used the least frequently.The interview for teachers and classroom observations revealed that factors such as teaching content and objectives,learning situation of students,specific teaching situations,teachers’ personal personalities and teaching styles affect teachers’ choices of teaching scaffolds.Meanwhile,the results of questionnaire and interview for students and two oral tests showed that various teaching scaffolds promoted students’ oral output to different degrees.On the one hand,scaffolding instruction improved students’ interest and motivation in oral English learning,and on the other hand,teachers’ provision of teaching scaffolds according to students’ ZPD enabled students to internalize their existing knowledge and construct new language output in the context.Finally,scaffolding instruction effectively improved the effectiveness of oral English teaching.The appropriate use of teaching scaffolds helped students engage in speaking activities and make objective evaluations of peer and self-performance.To sum up,scaffolding instruction can be applied to oral English teaching in senior high school,but the study also found that there is still need for improvement in the application of scaffolding instruction to oral English teaching in senior high school.First,teachers should fully recognize each student’s ZPD in teaching and set up scaffolds based on it.Second,during the teaching process,teachers should accurately grasp the teaching progress and remove the scaffolds timely.Third,teachers should be clear about their roles in teaching.There are limitations in this study,such as the relatively small number of research subjects and the relatively short classroom observation time,which need to improve further in the follow-up research.