A Study Of Teachers’ Scaffolding Talk In ESL Classrooms:from The Sociocultural Perspective

Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory has constantly influenced the field of second language teaching in the past decades.There is a tendency that the traditional teacher-centered classroom settings gradually transform to the learner-centered teaching mode.Teacher talk plays a vital role in the learner-centered L2 classroom,which attaches importance to the transferring of responsibility from the teacher to students.When teachers’ language is used in the process of building up scaffold to help students be capable of handling the task and facilitating students to reach a higher cognitive level,scaffolding talk occurs and gradually serves as a new research angle in developing second language teaching.The data of the study contains the English teaching videos with high quality in both junior high schools and senior high schools from various provinces.Relevant episodes were transcribed and analyzed according to the research objective.Through the research process,the present study attempts to answer the questions below:1)What types of function does teachers’ scaffolding talk frequently display in class?2)What discourse strategies are used in teachers’ scaffolding talk and their functions?It was found that different types of teachers’ scaffolding talk could create a positive influence and promote students’ learning.First of all,the frequently applied functions of teachers’ scaffolding talk include:1)Clarifying:arousing students’ attention to the forms and meanings,letting them produce more accurate output.2)Inspiring:inspiring students to step over the task,creating relaxing learning environment.3)Bridging:establishing a link between the teaching goal and the previous knowledge or students’ personal experience.4)Prompting:prompting the students to be an independent learner by providing appropriate clues.5)Extending:expanding students’ thinking both in depth and breadth and stimulating more output.Secondly,the frequently used discourse strategies during the process that teachers’ talk realizes scaffold and their functions include:1)Repeating:to express teachers’ attitude,emphasize the keynotes and provide students’ with more thinking space,etc.2)Questioning:to reduce the difficulty of the task,dig deeper output and expand students’ thought,etc.3)Paraphrasing:to support students’ understanding,strengthen students’ impression and reduce the difficulty of learning,etc.4)Feedback:to validate and comment for creating learning environment and bridging the current knowledge and the previous.In general,the present study shows the great importance of teachers’ scaffolding talk,and provides feasible methods for the construction of teachers’ scaffolding talk.