Language Skills
Mahnaz Mostafaei Alaei; Amir Kardoust; Abdulbaset Saeedian
Abstract
To better illuminate the link between scaffolding and visual aids, this quasi-experimental study attempted to scaffold an intact group of 14 intermediate-level Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners through providing graphs with the aim of enhancing their writing ability. Ensuring lack ...
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To better illuminate the link between scaffolding and visual aids, this quasi-experimental study attempted to scaffold an intact group of 14 intermediate-level Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners through providing graphs with the aim of enhancing their writing ability. Ensuring lack of familiarity with eight unknown words, they were scaffolded through visual images. The scaffolding process included three respective phases of contingency, fading, and transferring. As post-tests for checking the learners’ understanding of and opinion about the graph scaffolding process, a researcher-made questionnaire and a semi-structured interview followed the treatment phase. The results of the questionnaire showed that visual scaffolding aided the learners to better grasp the meaning of the target vocabularies and even some grammatical points in the materials. Moreover, the visual scaffolding helped them to produce the material in different modalities. The results also indicated all the three characteristics of scaffolding were met by the visual scaffolding. Finally, the interview results revealed the learners had favorable attitude toward visual scaffolding and considered the third phase of the scaffolding as the most challenging one. It can be concluded that the findings gave credence to the effectiveness of visual scaffolding in improving EFL students’ writing ability.
Fereshteh Shirzad; Saman Ebadi
Abstract
This study explored the autonomy of advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in reading comprehension through scaffolding and jigsaw in computer-assisted and conventional contexts. After being homogenized through the reading section of DIALANG proficiency test, a total of 80 female advanced ...
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This study explored the autonomy of advanced English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in reading comprehension through scaffolding and jigsaw in computer-assisted and conventional contexts. After being homogenized through the reading section of DIALANG proficiency test, a total of 80 female advanced EFL learners with the age range of 21 to 45 were selected as the participants of the study. They were randomly assigned to four groups: experimental group A (scaffolding in a conventional context), experimental group B (scaffolding in a computer-assisted context), experimental group C (jigsaw in a conventional context), and experimental group D (jigsaw in a computer-assisted context). Next, the autonomy in RC questionnaire, which was designed and piloted by Ebadi and Shirzad (in press), was administered as the pretest. Then, the learners in each group took part in three months (16 sessions) autonomy in reading comprehension training courses. After the treatment, the same autonomy in RC questionnaire was administered as the posttest. One-way ANCOVA was used to analyze the quantitative data. The results revealed that although both jigsaw and scaffolding approaches were successful in both conventional and computer assisted contexts from pre-test to post-test, the scaffolding method proved more effective. Moreover, both the scaffolding and jigsaw approaches were more effective in computer-assisted environment compared to conventional contexts, with the scaffolding CA approach outperforming the jigsaw CA technique. The findings’ implications for learners, teachers, and syllabus designers are discussed in both contexts.