Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
In modern society, English becomes more and more important as a necessaryway for international communication. It is also important in the English teaching. InEnglish learning, writing is seen as a vital part. English writing is a kind of productiveskill that needs students to integrate their knowledge about English. It is acomplicated and gradual progress which refers to the acquisition of languagestructures and grammars. During the writing, language is used properly. More, writingis such a process. In this process, many language skills are used such as reading,comprehension, and the organization of the words.English writing plays a very important role in language teaching and languagelearning. It can enhance the development of the other three skills: reading, speakingand listening. To test students’ English ability, writing is also a good way. It can showthe students’ practical and applied ability in English knowledge. Therefore, it is worthemphasizing the students’English writing.However, there are some common problems in English writing in many junior high schools in China. Many students do not know how to write and they are afraid ofEnglish writing. They complain that the writing class is so difficult and boring. Forthem, it is hard to express their ideas freely in English. There are several reasons forthis present situation. First, the students’ interest in English writing is not enough.They think that English writing is not interesting then they do not like to write.Second, the teaching method does not affect English writing positively. In atraditional way, the teachers like to see the results of the writing and they do not givemore attention on the process of the writing. The teachers do not give the studentshelp or any support during the writing. At last, the teachers and the students are tiredin the process of English writing teaching and learning, but there is less achievement.Third, the students’ writing ability is not very good. They cannot organize their wordsand they make mistakes in grammar, vocabularies and conjunctions. Therefore, thereare many problems that need to solve.
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1.2 Significance of the Study
With the development of the global economy, the countries begin to connectwith other countries. In the process of communication among countries, English isused widely, particularly in the written form. Writing can play an important role incultivating the students’ imagination and the students can be more active and creativein the writing process. As is known to all, writing is a key point to evaluate a students’English learning. Therefore, it is necessary to learn English writing well.English writing teaching is to cultivate students to acquire the other threeabilities: listening, speaking, reading. Then it helps the students build a good basis tolearn more and better. As a result, the teacher needs to know how to graduallyimprove the students’ writing skills. The teacher is the focus in the traditional Englishwriting class. This traditional teaching method does not pay attention to theinvolvement and cooperation between students and peers. Therefore, it is necessary tocarry out a new teaching method and it should be interactive and cooperative tochange the present situation of English writing class. Here, the scaffolding teaching isa way to improve this situation. According to the instructional process of scaffoldingwriting class, it is helpful to carry out the scaffolding teaching.Based on the current situation in English writing, she tries to apply scaffoldinginto English writing. Scaffolding can help students complete the writing tasks whichthey are unable to do independently, through the help of teachers and students. Thestudents can explore problems, solve problems and construct knowledge meaningindependently. Scaffolding can also increase the students’ English writing learninginterest and motivation. She puts scaffolding into practice, hoping that the students injunior high school can adapt to the scaffolding teaching and can improve theirwriting.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
This chapter introduces the related theory of scaffolding and writing. Moreover,the relationship between scaffolding and English writing are illustrated. The relatedstudy abroad and at home are also introduced in this chapter.
2.1 Scaffolding
She puts scaffolding into English writing teaching, to explore the effects ofscaffolding and improve students’ interest in English writing and writing ability. It isnecessary to introduce the definitions, functions, characteristics and procedure ofscaffolding.Many researchers referred to the definitions of scaffolding. Different people haddifferent options on scaffolding. It mainly talked about several aspects below.Scaffolding was used in architecture field and it was used to support a buildingat first. According to Pennil (2000), scaffolding was a temporary structure to supportpeople and it was a material in the construction. The scaffolding was removed whenthe structure was firm enough.Wood, Bruner, & Ross (1976) used first the scaffolding in education field.Scaffolding was the process in which an adult provided the support to the learners tohelp them complete the difficult task. In this view, scaffolding was the process toconstruct a building. In education, scaffolding had an effect on the improvement ofstudents and it helped the students get a new skill. According to the students’ ability,the scaffolding could increase or decrease. At last, the students could complete thetask independently. Moreover, scaffolding was temporary to help the students get ahigher level. When the task was impossible, the students needed some necessaryscaffolds to help them achieve the goals.There was also the metaphor of scaffolding. According to Anghileri (2002),scaffolding was to explore the nature of adult interactions in children’s learning. Itespecially referred to the support that an adult helped a child learn how to perform atask that could not be mastered independently. Later on, scaffolding referred to thedifferent kinds of supports in the learning. The supports were given by a teacher orpeers. The teacher helped the students master a task or concept that the studentscannot master alone.
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2.2 Related Theories on Scaffolding
There were mainly two related theories on scaffolding. They wereconstructivism theory and the zone of proximal development. In this section, thesetwo theories were introduced clearly.Constructivism was a major basic theoretical framework of scaffolding teaching,and scaffolding teaching was carried out under the principles of constructivism.Constructivism belonged to the cognitive learning theory and it had made bigsignificance on other learning theories.Constructivism emphasized that the students acquired the knowledge. In thelearning process, the students also cooperated with others in particular situation. Thesituation was provided by the teacher and the situation was related to the backgroundof social culture. In this process, the students talked about their ideas and they learnedmore from others. According to Cook (2000), the learners got improved andconstructed the knowledge by connecting the old and new knowledge. In the learning,the teacher provided different kinds of learning environment. There were fourcomponents of the learning environment: situation, cooperation, conversation andmeaning construction. In Richards’ (1986) view, the first three referred to the learningconditions and process, and the meaning construction was the final goal of learning.Therefore, it was important to construct meaning, interact with others, and relatedenvironment in constructivism. It meant that it was necessary to find out the nature,disciplinarian of the learned knowledge and the relationship between them (WuQinglin, 2003).Constructivism stressed the subjectivity of students with the guidance of theteacher. It catered to scaffolding teaching that emphasized the center of the students.Namely, the students were the main subjects of the class and the teacher was theguider and helper. Students were not only the receivers any more and they became themain subjects in the class. The students chose the information to process and theteacher helped them construct knowledge. The process of supporting was namely thescaffolding. The supports that the teachers gave were different kinds of the scaffolds.The teacher gave the students more information and helped before letting the studentsconstruct the new knowledge. The proper help of the teacher was the scaffolding inthe students’reachable level.
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Chapter 3 Methodology.........26
3.1 Research Questions.....26
3.2 Subjects..... 26
3.3 Instruments.........27
3.4 Procedure............29
3.5 Data Collection andAnalysis........33
3.5.1 Data Collection andAnalysis of Tests............33
3.5.2 Data Collection andAnalysis of Questionnaires.....34
3.5.3 Data Collection andAnalysis of Interview.....34
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion.........36
4.1 Results.......36
4.2 Discussion.......... 45
Chapter 5 Conclusion....49
5.1 Major Findings............49
5.2 Pedagogical Implication.......50
5.3 Limitations of the Study.......52
5.4 Suggestions for Further Research...........52
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion
In this chapter, the results and discussion will be illustrated clearly. Theaffection of scaffolding teaching can be seen here.
4.1 Results
In this thesis, the instruments are pre-test, post-test, questionnaires andinterview. The results of these instruments are obvious to see the effect of scaffoldingteaching.She gives out the pre-test in the both two classes before the experiment. Theresult of the pre-test is shown here. The data of pre-test is presented with IndependentSample Test of SPSS 19.0. In this table, the values of mean, standard deviation andother values of the experimental class and the control class are listed here.As is shown, table 4.1 is the descriptive statistics of the pre-test, which presentsthe mean scores of the experimental class (EC) and the controlled class (CC) andthe standard deviation. From table 4.1, it can be seen the mean of the experimentalclass is 9.4020, and the mean of the control class is 9.3966. The standard deviation ofEC is 1.34779 and the standard deviation of CC is 1.28791.In order to get the reliability and validity of this experiment, an independentsample pre-test was presented to confirm if there is a significant difference betweenthe two classes before the experiment. The result can be seen in Table 4.2.As is presented in Table 4.2, the significance is 0.342, which is larger than0.05, thus equal variances are assumed and equal means of pre-test can beachieved. That is to say, there is no statistically significant differencebetween students’ scores in EC and CC.
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Conclusion
The last chapter is the conclusion of the study. The conclusion part wouldinclude four items: major findings, pedagogical implications, limitations, suggestionsof further research. It is not only the last part but also is the most important part of thestudy. It is easy to see the importance and significance of the study from this part.After the three-month experiment, some findings can be made as follows.Firstly, scaffolding is effective in the English writing teaching, especially at theaspects of content, grammar, structure and logicality. Compared with the control class,the writing results of the experimental class students improves more. With the resultsof pre-test and post-test, it can be seen that scaffolding teaching is a more effectiveteaching method in junior high school than traditional teaching method. These twoclasses’ English writing scores both increase, but the experimental class gets moreobvious improvement. More, in the experimental class, students can express theirideas easier than the control class. By the reading, content, and language scaffolds,they can grasp the skill of writing and enrich their writing. During the writing, theycan write freely. More, with the evaluation of the teacher and the peers, they canrealize their mistakes and they can learn from others and improve themselves.However, in the control class, the students cannot get more help from the teacher or peers. They only imitate the model that the teacher gives and they cannot express theirideas properly. As a result, they do not get obvious improvement. The evidences canbe seen directly from the results of pre-writing and post-writing.Secondly, scaffolding can arouse the students’interest, increase their confidencein English writing, and change their attitude towards English writing. By analyzingthe data from the questionnaires and interview, it is founded that the students increasepositive attitude and interest in English writing. In the process of writing, the teacherprovides proper scaffolds according to students’ needs and ZPD to help them solveproblems or difficulties. This support by teacher and peers promotes the students’writing. They begin to like to write and decrease their anxiety in English writing. Thestudents enjoy the process of discussion and brainstorming and begin to like thewriting class. During the group work, the students become more active and interestedin writing and they feel their importance in group. They are willing to evaluate others’writing and are expected to evaluate by others. Thus, they build their confidence stepby step as their improvement.Therefore, scaffolding teaching is effective to improve the English writing injunior high school and makes a big difference to the experimental class students’English writing ability after the experiment.
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References (abbreviated)