The Application Of Scaffolding Teaching Method In Online Teaching For American Students

With the development of Chinese language teaching in the United States,the pathways for learning Chinese have become increasingly diverse,such as online Chinese language teaching,offline Chinese language teaching,Chinese language teaching programs promoted by the government,and Chinese language learning courses offered by companies.From June to August 2022,the author participated in the online Chinese language teaching program of NSLI-Y(the National Security Language Initiative for Youth).In the early stages of teaching,the author found that there were differences in the levels of students in the online Chinese language class,resulting in different learning situations.The teaching methods were single and the classroom interaction was insufficient.The teacher dominated the teaching,and the student participation was relatively low.There was a lot of teaching content,and students faced high learning pressures.The scaffolding teaching method under the guidance of the constructivist learning theory advocates for students to conduct independent exploration under various scaffolds built by the teacher,gradually realizing the construction of knowledge,which is beneficial for changing the traditional teaching method of imparting knowledge in the classroom and demonstrating the principle of "student-centered" teaching.Therefore,the author attempted to apply the scaffolding teaching method to the online Chinese language oral class for zero-level American high school students,exploring its positive significance in practice.This article mainly takes the constructivist theory and the zone of proximal development theory as the main theoretical basis.Based on a comprehensive review of relevant literature,through in-depth interviews and surveys,the feasibility of applying the scaffolding teaching method to online teaching is analyzed.The article uses the Zoom platform to implement online teaching,and conducts a detailed and in-depth examination and research on the practice.Through practical cases,this article analyzes the use of scaffolds in various parts of teaching,and summarizes the application through three methods: classroom observation,student testing,and teacher self-evaluation.Through teaching practice,the author found that the scaffolding teaching method is still beneficial for improving students’ Chinese communication skills in online teaching and has a positive impact on classroom teaching.The following insights are gained: 1.Accurately grasp students’ zone of proximal development and build personalized teaching scaffolds.2.Control class size and adopt a small-class teaching approach.3.Diversify scaffold types and reasonably combine scaffold segments.4.Diversify evaluation methods and make evaluation more detailed.This article hopes to provide some reference for the application of the scaffolding teaching method in short-term online Chinese language teaching in the future,in order to better promote the development of online Chinese language teaching.