Scaffolding in an Intermediate Level College ESL Class
A Case Study
Carolyn Ramsdell
ED3302 Northeastern University
Professor Shin
December 5, 2007
Abstract
This paper explores scaffolding in an intermediate level college ESL classroom that was
observed for five hours over six weeks. Students came from diverse nations to improve their
English and prepare to enter a US graduate school. The paper contends that scaffolding skills are
essential to the teaching of ESL and three types of scaffolding are discussed. Sample interactions
explicate the main question: how does the master teacher use scaffolding? Underlying theories
discussed are a blend of psycholinguistic, sociocultural and critical. Finally, the paper discusses
implications for teaching.
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The research topic explored in this paper is scaffolding in an intermediate level college
ESL class. Interest in this topic evolved during classroom observations; the master teacher
(hereafter be referred to as K) appeared casual and light hearted but as a teacher myself I knew
that he was also very skilled. This motivated me to research his seemingly endless repertoire of
scaffolding and learn how to do this. The primary research question is: How does my case study
instructor use scaffolding? Secondary questions are: what are effective ways to negotiate
meaningful interaction? How can a teacher perceive a student’s ‘zone of proximal development’?
How can questioning serve as scaffolding?
Fundamentally a sociocultural theory of second language learning, scaffolding theory
argues that dialogue “[constructs] the resources for thinking” and therefore develops spoken
language that is essential for learning in school and literacy itself (Gibbons, 2002, p.14).
Meaning is constructed when the students are engaged in social interactions with competent
target language speakers and among themselves. An important aspect of scaffolding is
appropriate mediation in the students’ ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD). Scaffolding
emphasizes social interaction through cooperative learning, group work, project-based learning,
self reflection, guided practice and critical inquiry.
In 1976 Wood, Bruner, and Ross first used the word scaffolding as an educational term:
"…a process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal
which would be beyond his unassisted efforts” (Rogoff qtd in Clark and Graves, 2005, p.2).
Generally speaking it is a supportive style of teaching that assists students in achieving a task
with gradually less intervention from the teacher. Three types of scaffolding are proposed by
Clark and Graves (2005): moment-to-moment verbal scaffolding, instructional frameworks that
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foster content learning, and instructional procedures for teaching reading comprehension
strategies (p.3).
Moment to moment verbal scaffolding refers to using questions to prompt students and
facilitate elaboration that deepens learning. The instructor must be familiar with students’
“…instructional histories…and…how their instructional talk moves students closer to the goal
and how they can use students' responses to make them more aware of the mental processes in
which they are engaged” (Clark and Graves, 2005, p.3).
A second type of scaffolding is a reading strategy which sometimes also incorporates
‘moment-to-moment’ scaffolding. Called instructional frameworks that foster content learning,
the instructor uses ‘queries’ that probe deeper than comprehension questions. Students have the
opportunity to make meaning of the text in groups when asked questions such as:
* How does that connect with what the author has already told us?
* What kind of problem did that cause?
* Did the author explain it clearly?
* What's missing?
* What do we need to find out?
(Clark and Graves, 2005, p.5)
A third type of scaffolding described by Clark and Graves (2005) is the scaffolded
reading experience (SRE)(p.5). This refers to the instructor planning pre-reading, during-reading
and post-reading for a particular assignment. This paper will demonstrate the instructor’s skill in
all three types of scaffolding.
The Setting
This case study reflects five 65 minute ESL classroom observations at Northeastern
University. The class is called Culture and Communication and the focus is integrating grammar,
listening and speaking skills. An excerpt from the syllabus explains that the course “…is
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designed to expand…knowledge of American culture…competency in English…and help meet
both personal and academic language needs”(Reynolds, 2007). The students are participants in a
study abroad program called Global Pathways, which is an academic year long program that
prepares them to enter a US undergraduate or graduate school. Course material is non-academic
with integrated grammar study. Thirteen students sit in three rows in a rectangular classroom
with the professor at a desk in front. The nations represented by the students are Saudi Arabia,
Japan, Vietnam and China. The majority are Chinese. They often work in groups of 2-4
students. Instructional materials include books, websites, the black board, films, and field trips.
Due to continued absences of selected focal students, this paper focuses on the instructor.
Classroom interactions
The following is a sample classroom interaction with transcript that represents the
research question. An analysis follows of the central ideas evident in the description.
In this interaction the instructor is giving directions and then helping students with an activity in
which they are required to write a dialogue from a scene in a novel and then act it out. Students
have been given roles: director, writer, actor, acting coach, pronunciation coach.
K: “You’ll be writing a dialogue using as many modals as you can. You can paraphrase
but I want it in your words.”
Students get into groups.
Some Chinese students speak in Chinese in front of the Vietnamese member of the group and K
intercedes:
K: “Does Khanh know Chinese?”
Students acknowledge that Khanh doesn’t speak Chinese. When some students don’t know
Khanh’s name, Karl pronounces it with them: “Khanh.”
K then helps a group act out the part of a jealous and angry husband:
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K:“You’re messing with my wife!” “Make sure everyone has the right emotions for the
part.”
K addresses the whole class, especially acting coaches:
K:“Make sure everyone has the right emotions. And use lots of modals…You must! I
can’t! How do you react when upset?”
The student stamps her feet and pretends to cry. They all laugh.
Analysis
At first glance the above interaction may seem unexceptional but in this short interaction
K is maximizing language development in four ways as he scaffolds the task of learning modals.
He uses cooperative group work, a novel for contextualized narrative and four skill development,
role play for pragmatic and extralingual development, and he addresses classroom power
dynamics.
Cooperative Group Work
The assignment is part of a project that involves group interaction, which increases
language production in several ways. Learners hear and speak more and they hear language in
context. They also hear message redundancy in this assignment: the same scene from the book
will be expressed in different ways in the dialogues the students write. K is scaffolding when he
roams the classroom responding to student questions, giving support when it is needed. Students
are solving language problems when they write original dialogue, and appealing for assistance as
needed. Gibbons argues that “…it is only when teacher support – or scaffolding – is needed that
learning will take place”(2002, p.10). Peer scaffolding is an essential part of this activity, which
facilitates elaborative modifications that may “…enhance comprehension even more than
linguistic alterations”(Larson-Freeman,1991, p.322). Group activities like these can be more
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relaxing for students and encourage less confident learners to speak. Insensitively used, group
work can be detrimental to students, as demonstrated by (Willet, 1995, p.484).
K addresses the students’ investment in the project work by continually reminding
students that what they are doing fits into the bigger curriculum picture. Before students began
working in their groups he told them they would eventually be dividing into two groups:
defenders and prosecutors. They would work on this for several classes and have a debate at the
end of the course. Styles of reasoning may be dramatically different among students, so
developing argument skills will be useful skill for US academic programs.
Use of a Novel
The novel, About the Author by John Colapinto, is set in a rich context of US culture
providing many situations in which students must consider “setting, participants, key norms and
genres.” These constitute a frame of reference for interpreting and understanding the culture and
the text, or “situational linguistic input” (Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p.210).
The assignment develops integrated language skill development, but as Gibbon
recommends, these skills are not taught discretely but as part of a high interest integrated
assignment (12). The novel is full of high interest (and possibly embarrassing) scenes --jealous
husbands, angry wives, alcoholism, divorce, and lesbian sexuality. Students in one group were
overheard asking each other how to pronounce phrases in the text and then how to say them in
their own words. Another student wrote some dialogue, others students listened. There was
nervous laughter and obvious discomfort with the subject of lesbian sexuality, and K respectfully
minimized that part. However, despite the discomfort students are acquiring extrasituational
linguistic input - knowledge about how “language features interact with cultural
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norms”(Kumaravadivelu, 2003, p.212). Inclusion of this novel in the course helps students
understand what’s culturally acceptable to discuss openly in American society.
By assigning a novel to the class K created a scaffolded reading experience which refers
to the instructor planning pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading for a particular
assignment for conceptual reinforcement (Clark and Graves, 2002, p.5) A previous ‘Town
Meeting’ activity is pre-reading scaffolding and the role play is ‘during reading’ scaffolding. A
debate was planned as post-reading scaffolding.
Role Play
Utilizing the high drama of the novel’s chapter, students learn to associate appropriate
emotions with modals through role playing. K coached the students on expressing the emotion
appropriate to the character and situation. He helped them find the emotion in themselves and
use that feeling in their acting. The sample below demonstrates K’s modelling of pragmatic and
paralinguistic skills to help students understand modals; Kumaravadivelu’s concept of
“extralinguistic input”(2003, p.212).
K:“Make sure everyone has the right emotions for the part. Make sure everyone has the
right emotions. How do you react when upset?”
K makes appropriate faces when he used the modals, modelling prosodic signals such as stress
and tone.
K:“And use lots of modals…You must! I can’t! You’re messing with my wife!”
The role play is also effective because it contextualizes the grammatical task ‘modals’
within a fictional narrative that requires understanding of modals to follow key aspects of the
drama. Doing so is “…an attempt to pair up grammatical form with meaningful sociocultural
context”(Celce-Murci and Olshatain, qtd in Kumaravadivulu, 2003, p. 215).
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Power Dynamics and Cultural Respect
K effectively addresses an ongoing class dynamic in which the majority Chinese students
speak Chinese when they are peer scaffolding. Khanh, the only Vietnamese student, is quieter
than many of the other students. He intercedes on her behalf when she is seated in a group with
students who are speaking Chinese:
K:“Does Khanh know Chinese?”
The students acknowledge that Khanh doesn’t speak Chinese. When some students don’t know
Khanh’s name, K asks them to pronounce it with him: “Khanh”
K has deftly but firmly addressed interactions that may promote – accurately or not – the
idea that Chinese are disrespectful toward Vietnamese people and their language. The need to
skillfully address possible cultural biases of home countries as well as those of the host country
underscores Gebhard’s argument that classroom second language learning is “…an institutional
phenomenon shaped by cultures and structures at work in educational systems”(1999).
Interactions like this can contribute to negative identity development in some students. It is
“essential that we take into account the interactional circumstances that position people in the
world” (McDermott qtd in Gebhard, 1999).
To further underscore the many ways that scaffolding can develop language learning, two
additional class interactions will be discussed that illustrate scaffolding: pre-lesson warm up and
Town Meeting.
Pre-lesson warm up
Pre-lesson banter seems to work in K’s class not only as social bonding but also as
motivation to learn vocabulary. What at first I thought was just chat at the start of each class I
soon realized was surely a strategy. K doesn’t miss a teachable moment for elaboration. Before
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one class, K asks students about their Halloween experiences, and the subject turns to chocolate,
and then to which country makes the best chocolate (Not the US they all agree!). This leads one
student to speak at length about the decline of the US economy compared to China’s. K keeps
asking questions, and slips corrections in casually as the conversation proceeds to which the
student responds and keeps talking. This leads to a conversation on the future of languages as
related to economics, which other students join.
During these regular pre-lesson discussions, K asks many divergent questions that elicit
language that reflects comprehension, analysis and evaluation. This kind of banter is more than
vocabulary development and conversational adjustment, however. Kumaravadivelu argues that
negotiated interactions play “a facilitative, not causative role” in L2 development and are not
sufficient. He describes as an overlapping concept of interactions as an ideational activity,
which “…entails a spectrum of individual, social, cultural and political factors that create the
very concept of language communication”(2003). This requires yielding control to students,
which Kumaravadivelu refers to as flexible talk management and topic control. K begins each
class with time for students to “…share their own individual perspectives on issues that matter to
them, and to share in a way that makes sense to them”( Kumaravadivelu, 2003).
Town Meeting
Another sample classroom interaction that illustrates scaffolding also focuses on the
instructor’s skillful questioning. This time the activity is a Town Meeting role play. K asks
groups to introduce their biographies as townspeople in a role play and indicate where their
character lives on a map. As they speak, K asks many questions –comprehension, predictive and
analytic (concepts such as motivation, audience and comparison). The characters will eventually
gather for a town meeting and debate some contentious issues facing the fictional town.
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K combines the use of role play and graphic organizers in a project based activity.
Students have to interpret the map and explain where they lived in the town – lots of prepositions
and directions. K uses a wide variety of questions such as “What’s a possible explanation?”
“What do you think his girlfriend will be like?” Kumaravadivelu refers to this as developing
‘microskills’ of inference and creativity. The question “What would you do in Cal’s place?” is
developing the microskills of modals but also cultural consciousness. Students are learning
grammar as well as “exploring the nuances of cross-cultural practices” (2003). Students often
peer scaffold with these questions. As they do, K gives plenty of time for students to appeal for
assistance, which may help him keep in tune with students’ ZPD.
K’s style of questioning, moment-to-moment verbal scaffolding and his ‘Questioning the
Author’ technique, is very productive compared to the more limited IRE style (Initiation,
Response, Evaluation). The use of divergent questions allows for multiple interpretations and
gives students a ‘comfort zone’ to participate in at the level they are ready for.
The six classroom interaction samples discussed above demonstrate many ways that
scaffolding supports student language development.
Implications for my own teaching
This project has clarified several insights that will have an effect on my own practices.
The following six concepts under gird my teaching philosophy: scaffolding (including peer
scaffolding), project based learning, cooperative group learning, integration of the four language
skills, use and respect of student funds of cultural knowledge/prior experiences, awareness of
classroom power dynamics and the importance of student investment in their learning. These
involve a combination of psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and critical theories of teaching ESL.
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Scaffolding is the overarching theory and there are numerous implications for my
teaching. An ESL instructor needs to have a large and flexible repertoire of scaffolding skills,
ranging from individual interaction modification, group scaffolding and the arrangement of peer
scaffolding. Cooperative group work in project based learning experiences is also essential. The
project based foundation of the Culture and Communication course is evident in the assessments:
70% of the grade is based on five projects: debate, town meeting, radio consumer warning,
persuasive speech and public service announcement. These activities apply ZPD theory:
cooperative learning, group work, self reflection, guided practice and critical inquiry. Although
the syllabus describes the course as designed to “…integrate grammar, listening and speaking
skills” (Reynolds, 2007), short written assignments complement the listening, speaking and
reading. The importance of integrated language skills for language development was crystallized
through my observations.
Studying the course syllabus gives me many ideas for course design. Required texts and
websites on the syllabus illustrate the rich material that is used to develop skills in a range of
contexts: a grammar workbook, a novel, articles from The New Yorker, a phonetics website and
a video forum. Contextualized linguistic input helps students understand how language is shaped
by contexts. The assignments underscore the importance of authentic texts and in classroom
discourse.
My observations also underscored the importance of explicit instruction and guidance
during group work, and how the use of realia and visual graphic organizers can help keep the
group focused. Here the instructor is a coach, informally offering verbal scaffolding and
strategies. K never simplified language; if a slow pronunciation was needed it was followed by
authentic pronunciation, context and emotion.
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The social and cultural experience of students is also a fundamental aspect of language
learning. Skill development should include using student funds of knowledge and prior
experience. This is clearly stated on the syllabus: weekly class topics effectively integrated
student funds of knowledge and prior experiences. Topics were: jobs, Hollywood, disasters and
tragedies, consumer warnings, Kennedy and History, computers and the Internet, and Helping
Others. These are all topics that engage students with US culture but about which they would
have experience and a ready fund of knowledge to bring to the conversation. In addition, using
student funds of knowledge and prior experience is also part of being aware of classroom culture
and power dynamics. Tensions may arise and face saving techniques can be a teacher’s tool.
Culturally diverse values and behaviors can be navigated by providing contexts in which to work
on pragmatics and explore cultural diversity. The instructor should be educated about the
countries and languages of origin of students and how potential attitudes and customs might
influence learning styles and power dynamics.
All of the above contribute to an item of central importance that has implications for
teaching: student investment in their learning. The reason for being in an ESL class will vary,
and instruction must respond. As Peirce argues, “…if learners invest in a second language, they
do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic and material
resources, which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital (1995). Clear
understanding of student motivation and flexible course design are the implications here.
Flexibility may be the key word to sum up the implications for my teaching after
observing the Northeastern University class Culture and Communications. Flexible and skilled
enough to: perceive and address students’ ZPD; perceive and address social and cultural styles
and tensions in the classroom; contextualize skill development for meaningful learning;
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understand student investment and respond to it; teach a class in which students are comfortable
and excited about learning, a class in which we all grow …a daunting array of challenges in ESL
teaching.
“The act of playing the game has a way of changing the rules.”
(Gleik, qtd. in Larson-Freeman, 1991).
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References
Clark, K F, & Graves, M F (March 2005). Scaffolding students’ comprehension
of text: classroom teachers looking to improve students’ comprehension should consider
three general types of scaffolding. The Reading Teacher 58, 6. p.570(11).
Retrieved December 01, 2007, from Educator's Reference
http://find.galegroup.com/itx/infomark
Gebhard, M. (1999). Debates in SLA Studies: Redefining Classroom SLA as an
Institutional Phenomenon. TESOL Quarterly, 33 (3), 545.
Gibbons, P (2002). Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning: Teaching Second
Language Learners in the Mainstream Classroom. Heinman Press.
Kumaravadivelu. B (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching.
Yale University Press.
Larson-Freeman, D. (1991). Second Language Acquisition Research: Staking out
the Territory. TESOL Quarterly 25, (2), 315-350.
Reynolds, K. (2007). Global Pathways Course Syllabus: Culture and Communication.
Professor’s Syllabus. Northeastern University.
Willet, J.(1995). Becoming First Graders in an L2: Ethnographic Study of L2
Socialization. TESOL Quarterly, 29 (3), 473-503.