Speaker
Description
The 2018 Educational Program put higher requirements on students’ writing ability: students can create new text for different purposes and audiences using the knowledge of language and culture they have learned. In fact, writing is a difficult skill requiring both a firm foundation of language structures and rich ideas, which turn out to be a tough challenge for students, especially low-achieving ones. How can teachers support and promote students' knowledge construction and meaningful learning, stimulate their interest, and improve their English writing levels? Based on the observation and interview, the students are not motivated to follow the writing class with the current strategy applied by the teacher, and they also have poor ability to write letters and opinion essays in English. This classroom action research is conducted on 72 eleventh graders in the form of cycles: (1) planning the action, (2) implementing the action, (3) observing the action, and (4) analysis and reflecting. The research involves an investigation into scaffolding theory in the background of "Zone of Proximal Development," evaluates the impacts of scaffolding on students’ writing ability, and discusses in detail the steps of scaffolding applied in high school writing lessons. The findings outlined eight characteristics of scaffolding (McKenzie, 1999) and indicated the impacts of applying scaffolding strategy on improving students’ writing ability as well as creating momentum in learning writing in a student-centered teaching model. Ultimately, some teaching inspirations and suggestions are provided to improve the effects of teaching writing to high school students.
