Chapter One Introduction
1.1 Research Background
In today’s society, international communication is increasingly frequent, and English has become the most important tool for communication. In our country, English has become an important course whether in primary school, middle school or university. In addition to schools, the society’s demand for English proficiency is also continuously improving. Speaking ability, one of the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing, directly reflects the comprehensive level of English. For a long time, English teaching in China has always emphasized the role of teachers and neglected the interaction among educators, learners, learning tasks and learning environment. Influenced by the long-term exam-oriented teaching method, the traditional English teaching in Chinese senior high schools has always been teacher-centered, and grammar translation is the main teaching method. Teachers are the only knowledge givers and students are passive knowledge recipients. In most schools, students have poor oral English foundation, weak oral communication ability. What’s more, they have no interest in oral English learning. Therefore, their initiative, consciousness and enthusiasm in oral English learning are not strong, and they lack of good oral English learning habits and oral learning strategies. Moreover, due to our country’s college entrance examination system, some teachers pay too much attention to grammar or reading, mostly neglecting oral English, resulting in students being in a state of examination-oriented learning for a long time. This teaching method has been criticized for neglecting the active participation of students in English learning.
In our country, English has become an important course in primary school, middle school and university. In addition to schools, the society’s requirements for English proficiency are also constantly improving. Influenced by the long-term exam-oriented teaching method, the traditional English teaching in high schools in China has always been teacher-centered. And the grammar-translation teaching method is the main teaching mode. Teachers are the only knowledge givers and students are passive knowledge receivers. This teaching method has been criticized as neglecting students’ active participation in English learning. Furthermore, due to the college entrance examination system in our country, some teachers pay too much attention to grammar or reading, and mostly neglect spoken English, which leads to students being in a state of examination-oriented learning for a long time.
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1.2 Research Objectives and Significance
This paper mainly attempts to apply peer-scaffolding teaching model to senior high school oral English teaching, updating the traditional teaching methods, and gradually improve the senior high school oral English teaching model. Students can build a support for oral expression in a certain situation, and then they can make an exploration and cooperation. What’s more, their interest and oral expression ability can be improved through various evaluations. This paper is to apply peer scaffoldings to senior high school oral English teaching, hoping to enlighten senior high school oral English teaching. Besides, this paper aims to help students develop oral English, and improve oral English learning efficiency. To a certain extent, this study is expected to provide some guidance for students’ oral English development, especially for senior high school English learners. In theory, this study aims to enrich the content of scaffolding research. This paper investigates the current situation of oral English teaching in senior high schools. Then, this study uses peer scaffolding as a strategy to develop a concrete and feasible teaching design for senior high school students. Finally, this paper attempts to clarify the significance of introducing peer scaffolding into Chinese senior high school oral English classes.
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Chapter Two Literature Review
2.1 Research on Oral English Teaching Home and Abroad
In the reform of global basic education curriculum in the last century, oral English teaching, as a part of foreign language teaching, has received more and more attention. In the aspect of theoretical research, Behaviorism focuses on the fluency of second language. Gatbonton and Segalowiz (1988) pointed out in Creative Automation: Principles for Promotion Fluency within a Communication Framework that autonomy has important practical significance in language learning, and autonomy is regarded as an actual product or a by-product of psychological process. From the cognitive perspective, Oppenheim (2000) mentioned in The Importance of Returning Sequences for Nonnative Speaker Fluency and Cognition that fluency of non-native speakers can be defined by the choosing process of words and expressions. Oppenheim believes that some short cyclic repetition of speech sequences can effectively reflect second language fluency, and gives evidence theory, strength theory, and hierarchical chunk theory as the basis (lai Hongling and Wang dianjian, 2010). Kormos (1999) defined the changes from the perspective of psycholinguistics as follows: “self-change is an external manifestation of the operation of the language monitoring mechanism.” Lennon (1990) took 12 German college students whose mother tongue was Germane as the research objects. The task assigned by the teacher to the students was to retell the story in English. The study found that 73% of the words used by the students were changed in the process of retelling stories by using English as a second foreign language, of which 3% were phonetic changes and the rest were syntactic and lexical changes. The results of the research show that with the improvement of language proficiency, language learners gradually change their oral English from simple sentences to more complicated textual structure.
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2.2 Research on Scaffolding Instruction Home and Abroad
Peer scaffolding, originally called “mutual aid support” by Holden and Clark (2006), and refers to the classroom teaching method adopted in ESL classes, in which several groups of two or more students work together to solve a common task or problem. Under the guidance of this method, the group can learn from each other, build new knowledge together, and develop the nearest development area. Broadly speaking, the peer scaffolding in a group interaction is unevenly shared by each member and functions in an unequal way, and occasionally changes due to unpredictable changes in collaborative work among group members on learning tasks (Holton and Clark, 2006).
Now most scholars regard scaffolding instruction as one of the important construction teaching modes. According to the exploration of “the relevant documents of distance education and training project” of European Community, scaffolding instruction is defined as “providing a conceptual framework for learners to construct the understanding of knowledge” (Banaszynski & Joe, 2000). This conceptual framework is to develop the learners’ need of the further understanding of the problem, therefore, it requires prior to decompose the complex learning task, so as to facilitate the learners’ understanding in-depth.
Dikson(1993) proposed that scaffolding instruction is the orderly system, contains the informative content, the material, the task and corresponding support to improve the teaching process. Barak Dosenshine(1992)thought, scaffolding instruction is used by teachers or more capable partners to help learners to solve the problems that they are unable to solve them alone, which help the learners to span the distance between the current level and target. Wood (1976) pointed out that scaffolding instruction is a kind of method that young children or novice solve the problems, and complete the task under the help of ability people, or reach the goal that cannot achieve it without others’ support.
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Chapter Three Theoretical Basis ................................ 16
3.1 Cooperative Learning Theory .............................. 16
3.2 Zone of Proximal Development ............................. 17
Chapter Four Research Design and Methodology ........................... 20
4.1 Research Subjects ....................................... 20
4.2 Research Instruments ............................... 20
Chapter Five Data Analysis ........................................ 30
5.1 Analysis of Questionnaires .......................................... 30
5.2 Analysis of Pre-test and Post-test .................................. 36
Chapter Five Data Analysis
5.1 Analysis of Questionnaires
Before the experiment is carried out, in order to ensure the effectiveness of the experiment, the author investigates the students’ oral English learning in the experimental class of the school, and points out the direction for the follow-up oral English teaching with the peer scaffolding method under the guidance of the internship teacher.
The questionnaire involves 12 questions in two aspects:
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Chapter Six Results and Discussion
6.1 Major Findings
In senior high school, students do not have many opportunities to practice spoken English. So the peer scaffolding method is seldom used in the oral English classes. Therefore, giving them more opportunities for classroom task interaction will help improve the situation. However, it is very necessary to provide them with appropriate help. Not only because of their different teaching ideas and cultural backgrounds, but also because they use a large number of peer scaffolding words to help their peers improve their English communication skills. Students use peer scaffolding method to give support to each other. In the discussion of classroom interaction, students are unwilling to speak voluntarily because they lack of self-confidence and courage. Therefore, mutual encouragement among peers is conducive to breaking the situation of being reluctant to speak and not daring to speak, so that the discussion can achieve the effect of the initial teaching goal setting.
After nearly three months of teaching experiments, through the analysis of the scores of the two tests in the experimental class and the control class, it is found that compared with students in the traditional teaching method, the students in the experimental class have improved their vocabulary diversity and accuracy under the peer scaffolding teaching method. Through the questionnaires, we know that the students in the experimental class think that the new vocabulary teaching method can improve their vocabulary mastery and English proficiency. Therefore, this study proves that the answer to the two previous research questions is affirmative: compared with the traditional teaching method, the application of peer-scaffolding has active influence on fluency, word diversity and accuracy of learners’ oral English. So giving them more opportunities for oral English interaction will help improve the situation. Proper help is very necessary for them. Not only because of their different educational concepts and cultural backgrounds, but also because they use a large number of peer scaffolding words to help peers improve their English communicative ability. For English teachers, the task of English discussion is in progress. The students should be guided to give examples to each other in order to achieve the purpose of discussion. Finally, a large number of studies have proved the effectiveness of peer scaffolding discourse in English classroom interaction, so teachers should learn to actively use these peer scaffoldings in the process of second language teaching.
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