TEACHER’S USE OF SCAFFOLDING IN ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS FOR MAINSTREAM FRESHMEN AT FELTE, ULIS

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The current research aimed at identifying the scaffolding tools used by teachers in speaking lessons for FELTE freshmen and the reasons behind their choices of those tools as well as investigating the effectiveness of this practice from students' perspective. To attain those objectives, qualitative approach was adopted for data collection and analysis. Specifically, data was collected from five teachers and twenty-three students by means of two research instruments namely classroom observations and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis revealed that teachers utilized all six scaffolding tools in English speaking instruction for FELTE freshmen namely feeding back, hints, instructing, explaining, modelling and questioning. Of these, questioning was ranked as the most commonly used scaffolding tool whereas the other tools were observed with lower frequency. It is also noteworthy that more scaffolding was embedded in speaking instruction in English for Academic Purposes lessons than in English for Social Purposes lessons. Six underlying reasons for teachers’ choices of scaffolding tools were revealed, including the characteristics of instructional tasks, learners’ academic background, learners’ cognitive development, learners’ exposure to the target language, learners’ motivation and time management. Although students were highly appreciative of teacher’s scaffolding in speaking instruction, the effectiveness of this practice might be hindered by learners’ passivity as well as the discrepancy between teacher’s actual scaffolding and students’ expectation of teacher's support. Based on the insightful findings, the study proposed some practical implications for teachers to improve their practice of scaffolding in EFL speaking instruction.