The Instructional Scaffolding of Chinese Writing Class in Singapore Primary Schools: The Theoretical Background of SMPFR and Design of the Lesson Plans

The Chinese composition produced by Singapore primary students are often considered as lacking in content, coherence and cohesion. With the aim of developing a set of effective teaching strategies that cater to the needs of Chinese language teachers in Singapore, the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, NTU, conducted a school-based experiment titled “Improving Primary School Children’s Chinese Writing Ability through Scaffolding”. The study lasted for two and a half years and has gone through the process from “Research” to “Validation”. Now, the research results will be produced in the form of a toolkit and disseminated to schools in Singapore. In this paper, the authors first reviewed the theoretical background that underpins the model, and then demonstrated the teaching strategies and steps of the model in details, using a lesson plan to help frontline teachers better understand and implement the scaffolding model in their classrooms.

Keywords

Singapore primary schools’ composition writing Chinese writing Zone of Proximal Development instructional scaffolding model

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; June 2017; Issue No. 1; p.157 - 169

Publisher

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Chinese Language Program, Columbia University
Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

Language

Chinese

ISSN

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)