A Case Study Of Scaffolding In The Teaching Of Reading In Senior High School English Classes From A Sociocultural Perspective

In SLA field, teacher talk has long been studied from a cognitive perspective. Recently, however, more and more researches are being carried out from a sociocultural perspective, especially researches on scaffolding, have led to a growing challenge to those from the cognitive perspective.This thesis is a case study designed to investigate the scaffolding that teachers provide in the teaching of reading in Senior High School English classes. The study is conducted from a sociocultural perspective and the purpose is to have a better understanding of the scaffolding in teacher-student interaction, as well as the process of the transfer of responsibility from teachers to students.Specifically, there are three research questions. Firstly, what are the features of the scaffolding that teachers provide in the teaching of reading in Senior High School English classes? Secondly, are teachers successful in transferring responsibility during the process of providing scaffolding to students? Thirdly, how do teachers perceive their role in the teaching of reading in English classes and how do their perceptions of the role influence the scaffolding they provide in the class?The subjects of the study are two teachers and the students in their classes in a Senior High School. The data was collected through video recording and interview. The video recording of the classes were transcribed and coded.The analysis of the coding results, together with the interview results,gives answers to the research questions. Firstly, the scaffolding that teachers provide in the teaching of reading in Senior High School English classes has three features:(1) teachers played a dominant role whenproviding scaffolding to students;(2) teachers made efforts to handover the responsibility to students during scaffolding;(3) teachers emphasized the mutual engagement in problem-solving during scaffolding. Secondly,the situations of transfer of responsibility in the two classes were not ideal because students in both classes achieved a very low level of self-regulation, which means in spite of teachers’ efforts to handover responsibility, students’ willingness to take the responsibility is of vital importance as well. In other words, successful transfer of responsibility requires the joint efforts of both teacher and students. Thirdly, teachers’ perception of their roles had great influence on the way they provided scaffolding and therefore affected the quality of scaffolding they provide to students. The teacher who perceives her role as a guide and mediator provides scaffolding to students in a contingent and tailored way, while the teacher who perceives her role as an organizer and assessor usually treats all students as a whole when providing scaffolding. As a result, the teacher who gives emphasis to students’ individual differences and needs is more successful in transferring responsibility to students since she gets students more close to the self-regulated stage in learning.