Scaffold Language Learning in Academic ESL Classroom - Article Example

Name: Course: Date: Professor: Generic Structure Analysis This journal article is entitled “Scaffold Language Learning in Academic ESL Classroom”. Scaffolding refers to giving a contextual meaning that supports the use of a language which is much simplified, uses graphics and visuals, the teacher modeling hands-on learning and cooperative learning. In this, a teacher of the second language learners has to enable that support. When the students become more proficient, the scaffold is eventually done away with. The following are the types of scaffolding which are effective for the learners. 1 Language simplification. This is done by making the selections short, speaking in the present tense and avoiding the use of idioms. 2 Inquiry for completion and not generation. Here, a teacher should ask students to respond from a list or a partially finished paragraph. 3 Visuals. Information can be presented by the teacher and then he/she asks the students to respond with the use of tables, outlines and graphs. The purpose of this article is to share a strategy that facilitates teachers scaffolding of academic difficult vocabulary. The students who participate actively are the key to a success. The overriding drive in current changes in ESL is the need to teach language through essential things. The goal is to prepare students for success, so ESL is best taught through meaningful lessons that teach mathematics, sciences and social studies. This drives support efforts toward planning thematic instruction. Academic vocabulary is learnt through the provision of theme studies. The lesson design integrates reading and writing and leads students from pre-reading stage to the post-writing stage ( Schellens, Raes, De wever & Vandorhoven 2010). Literature review Scaffolding studies which in ESL setting, describe on how the teachers give scaffolding instructions. This is done using various approaches such as repetition, questioning or elaboration in order to help the language learners have enough English knowledge. In the literature review it is revealed that typical class teachers during the reading of instructions can apply scaffolding to teach the ELLs. Because the use of scaffolding has been encountering limited studies with ELLs in class reading, the literature review suggested various ways through which teachers are supposed to apply these strategies on the students in classrooms. For example, (Van paul, Volman & Beishuizen 2012) explains how a teacher of a fifth grade deploys some moves which are discourse. This seems to be a good method since the ELLs get time to construct their responses. In a similar study, (Panselinas & Komis 2009) highlights students’ roles, in saying that both the students and the teachers should be active participants in class for the L2 development. Some studies look keenly on scaffolding in interactions between different languages and groups with a specific aim on scaffolding development. As investigated by (Li & Lim 2008), how bilingual students helped their peers in their English class by using or rather implementing a reading strategy. Different students were placed in different groups and they helped one another in getting the meanings to various words, capturing the main idea and asking several questions and also answering others. When an English test on vocabulary was given, a tremendous improvement was seen compared to the test which was done before the strategy. In another study, similar findings were reported between ESL and learner groups. This study showed that scaffolding that was provided by noble members contributed positively to the development of the L2. Even though research on scaffolding has expanded and contributed so much on the practice, its talk has been looked into keenly in a social context (Kim & Hannafin 2011). Nevertheless, for social interaction to take place, there must be a media and these are the students. There exists a shape interaction and a power relation. The correlation between power and scaffolding is that, power enables one group or a person to have control over other groups or persons by compelling other people or groups which are non-powerful contributors to goods and resources. (Molenaar, Boxtel & Sleegers 2010) In a classroom setting, this explains how and why some students do not get the full chance to comment or ask questions in class. Others gain many opportunities while others do not. If some students have limited access or opportunities to talk, they will have fewer chances to be listened to and thus they will end up receiving less feedback. This will generally pull them back. The Study A research was done in one of the universities in United States; it dealt with oral skills. The goal was to help some students to develop their oral skills. The sample comprised of nine students of the age bracket between 18 and 35. There were five ladies and four men in the sample. In classroom, the teacher made them to learn in different tasks, which included the formal lectures, group works and the whole class student discussions. For the discussions that were meant for the whole class, the teacher would give one student to lead from any topic they would like to discuss. These topics would lead to great cultural knowledge and understanding. Students were asked to help their peers to do all the mechanical exercises in all class sessions. Data analysis and collection The oral skills were observed for almost five months of instructions. The data used were the audio and video recording, student’s diaries and field notes. During this five month period, the teacher reviewed the field notes and found incidents of scaffolding. It is said that education is not only the physical manipulation of objects but also the great deal of learning how to use language, interpreting experiences and to formulate queries and also to finally solve them (Masters & Yelland 2007. I as a teacher, I adopted something from (Panselinas & Komis 2009) which guided my analysis in knowing the effectiveness of scaffolding. The following are some of the points to show its effectiveness: 1 Learners are encouraged to control their frustration in their difficulties 2 Learners are motivated and action directed to task continuity 3 The task is appropriate and challenging enough 4 Learners become more competent 5 Learners possess the task and contribute to learning event Over some period of time, I identified recurrent themes that can describe the students’ seeking, responding to and directing of scaffolding. Findings While investigating this issue, two questions emerged. They included: 1 How does power impact students access to the use of scaffolding? 2 How do learners seek and direct scaffolding across types of interaction in the classroom? Students used a number of strategies of communication to seek and respond to and direct scaffolding during teacher-led instructions. In class, the teacher only acted as the facilitator while the students participated. The teacher gave equal chances for the students to participate but the students didn’t participate well when they were working with their peers and also the outspoken students dominated the talk in the whole class discussion. Whenever the teacher was absent, the students feared or rather didn’t know how to invite their members of the group to the conversation or assist others to complete a task. Power related issues were severally observed within the whole class-teacher interaction which the teacher managed very well by minimizing differences between students through several conversational strategies. For instance, when an active student comments or answers a question without given a chance, the teacher will tell him or her to bid and wait for his or her time. This was a great way of making the students who are active not to outdo the less active ones in the class. It helped so much in the scaffolding process. Further Interpretations and Teacher Implications In some instances scaffolding either failed during discussions without the teacher’s guidance. Some students may have perceived classroom environment as a competition zone rather than a collaborating environment. From an evaluation of data, it also became clear that a difficulty in understanding others impacted upon scaffolding. Some students got difficulty since others commented with a strong accent which made them not too further interact with others. Interaction with such students was so relaxed which is described in large number of journal entries. On student said this; sometimes I have problems to understand people from countries like japan and china because of their strong accents and I feel so uncomfortable asking them several questions so I finish without knowing or getting what they wanted to say. Looking at the findings and the discussions, it becomes hard for some teachers to promote scaffolding in classroom discussions. As a teacher, below are some of the suggestions on the same issue: 1 Discuss and explore belief of the students Some students see that because others have strong accent, they tend to give up in class discussions. As a teacher I saw it best to explore students beliefs early in the semester. 2 Teacher students to ask questions Students in classroom tend to focus on the right answer rather than on collaborating with the other students. The teacher should help students to actively engage in pursuit questions, for example, tell us how you arrived at your conclusion? 3 Highlighting and teaching effective scaffolding Teachers should regularly provide models of scaffolding, majorly in pairs or group discussions since students may not know how to apply conversational rules and fulfilling conversational roles assigned by teachers. Conclusion L2 teaching methodologies encourage teachers to switch from traditional teaching which is based on teacher-centered to learner-centered teaching in a classroom setting. Learner-centered provide room for interaction among the students and thus opportunities for negotiation (Howe 2013). In the ESL class, scaffolding was observed to be occurring routinely as students interacted with the teachers in various activities of the class. Scaffolding however seemed ineffective in pairs or small groups since struggles were common among the students. Power relations and beliefs about group work may hinder learners from being involved or rather engaging in dialog with guided support. Teachers can overcome some of these challenges by implementing various techniques in order to help the students in providing support for their peers and benefit from scaffold talks. Scaffolding experiences can improve and support the performance of students before, after and during reading in the classroom sessions. This experiences help the students develop essential skills for understanding and extracting texts meaning and boosting ones performance in in reading comprehension assessments (Van Paul, Volman & Beishuizen 2012). In addition, students who have benefited in scaffold learning are better and able to function as independent readers and express varieties of Ideas in different ways. As a teacher, scaffolding is a good way of improving students ability if it is done as discussed above and with the guidance of the teacher. This will give good results hence a success in the students result. References Howe, C. 2013. Scaffolding in context: Peer Interactions and abstract learning. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, vol. 2. p. 4-9. Kim, C.M. & Hannafin, M.J. 2011. Scaffolding problem solving in technology-enhanced learning environments (TELEs): Bridging research and theory with practice. Computers and Education, vol.56. p. 403-415 Lee, S.Y., Baik, J. & Charlesworth, R. 2006. Differential effects of Kindergarten teachers’ beliefs about developmentally appropriate practice on their use of scaffolding following inservice training. Teaching and Teacher Education, vol.22. p.935-945. Li, D.D. & Lim, P.C. 2008. Scaffolding online historical inquiry tasks: a case study of two secondary school classrooms. Computers and Education, vol.50, p 1395-1400. Masters, J. & Yelland, N. 2007. Rethinking scaffolding in the information age. Computers and Education, vol.48. p.362-380. Molenaar, I., Boxtel C.A.M. & Sleegers, J.C.P. 2010. The effects of scaffolding metacognitive activities in small groups. Computers in Human Behavior. P. 1727-1733 Panselinas, G and Komis, V. 2009. Scaffolding through talk ingroupwork learning. Thinking skills and creativity, vol. 4. P 87-100. Schellens, T., Raes, A., De wever, B. & Vandorhoven, E. 2010. Scaffolding Information Problem Solving In Web-Based Collaborative Inquiry Learning. Vol.59. P. 82-90. Shen, Q., Fang, D., Wu, S. & Liu, G. 2003. A comprehensive framework for assessing and selecting appropriate scaffolding based on analytic hierarchy process. Journal of Safety Research, vol.34,p. 590-595. Smit, J. & Eerde, V.D. 2013. What counts as evidence for long-term realization of whole class scaffolding? Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, vol.2, p. 22-30. Van de paul, J., Volman, M. & Beishuizen, J. 2012. Promoting teachers scaffolding in small group work: A contingency perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education, vol.28, p. 196-203. Williams, T.S., MasterGeorge, M.A. & Ontai, L.L. 2010. Caregiver involvement in infant peer interactions: scaffolding in a social context. Early childhood Research Quarterly, vol.25. p.255-260. Read More