A Study Of Peer Scaffolding Talk In Senior High School English Class

After Vygotsky(1978)proposed the basic idea of sociocultural theory that learning is first produced by the social interaction between novices(children or learners)and experts(parents or teachers),the term“Scaffolding” has become a new research direction.In the SLA classroom,scaffolding theory is combined with talk to provide assistance.When students can’t complete the learning task independently,peer scaffolding talk is a good practical aid for them.Richard,J.et al.(1992)pointed out in Longman Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics that scaffolding talk is a target language structure based on many interactions.It means that in a communication between peers,peers can use useful oral language to help other peers master the target language.The oral language here is scaffolding talk.Therefore,this study attempts to explore the types and output of peer scaffolding talk to promote English learning for senior high school students.The current content of the English Curriculum Standard of Senior High School(2017)also requests students to understand the different types of discourse in the compulsory courses.They should be able to communicate meaning,intention,or emotional attitude,understand different cultural elements and their connotations,analyze the structure and linguistic characteristics of different types of talk,state events,convey information,and express opinions and attitudes in oral or written form.In this study,an English teacher and 84 students taught by Guiyang Model Senior High School were selected as the research objects.Classroom observation and recording were the main research tools,and were also used as auxiliary research tools to Questionnaires in this study.From the collected recording files,the author selected the ones which were related to the research question,worked on the selected recordings with transcribing,encoding and classification.The questions of this thesis are as follows:(1)What types of peer scaffolding talk do students use more commonly in senior high school English class?(2)Are there differences in students’ responses on the facility of peer scaffolding talk output?Based on the classroom observation,recording transcription,and questionnaire analysis on the English lessons of Senior Two in the school,the author drew the following main conclusions: 1.In senior high school English classrooms,the 3 commonly-used types of peer scaffolding talk are Encouraging,Strengthening and Expanding.2.In common classroom activities,the different responses of scaffolding talk output is mainly reflected in the students of Arts and Science Class,but there is no significant difference between the students of different genders.In general,students are more likely to output scaffolding talk in brainstorming,problem-based reading and discourse rewriting.In addition,with the help of peer scaffolding talk,the discussion tasks wassmoothly completed,which effectively promoted the output of students’ talk(especially students with low levels and little oral output in the classroom.It not only improved their class participation,but also developed their mind and emotion.This had promoted both students’ English learning and the teacher’s teaching work.Due to some objective factors,this study still has certain limitations.For example,the English proficiency level of the participants is only a single level in two key classes of senior two in this school.However,through the related discussions in this study,some research results have been drawn.For example,in the process of senior high school English interactive tasks,peers who were trained before the class will actively use scaffolding talk to help students and finally complete English discussion tasks.Thereby activating the English classroom and promoting the comprehensive improvement of students’ English learning ability.The author suggests that future research should broaden the scope of the study subject’s grades,schools,etc.,and involve more related factors of students psychological development.So as to make the results of scaffold talk on peer interaction more universal and representative.