The Effect Of Group Interaction Patterns On Peer Scaffolding In Senior High School English Grammar Class

Peer interaction has been a focus of second language acquisition research and pedagogical research,supported by abundant theories including Interactionist approaches and Sociocultural approaches.Empirical studies have showed that peer scaffolding or collective scaffolding occur in peer interaction,in which the nature of scaffolding might be different.Based on it,this paper attempted to investigate the nature of peer scaffolding in distinctive patterns of group interaction.To be specific,this study analyzed the different patterns of group interaction in senior high school English grammar tasks,as well as the peer scaffolding in group interaction,and explored the effects of different patterns of group interaction on peer scaffolding.The subjects of the study were 60 senior high school students from two classes of a middle school in Chu Xiong City of Yunnan Province.In this study,qualitative research method was used.The interaction and discussion over grammar-based tasks of 17 groups were recorded and transcribed into written texts that were analyzed by three steps.The first step was to analyze the patterns of group interaction and their characteristics from the perspective of equality and mutuality;the second step is to encode peer scaffolding in group interaction and calculate the frequency for the further analysis;and the third step is to explore the relationship between interaction patterns and peer scaffolding through comparing the frequency of peer scaffolding and probe into the transcribed texts as well as the interviewing results.The study found five types of interaction patterns in senior high school English grammar class,and they were Collaborative,Dominant/Dominant,Dominant/Passive,Expert/Novice and Blend pattern as a newly found interaction pattern.Among all of17 groups,Collaborative pattern was predominant in number(9 groups),followed by Expert/Novice pattern(4 groups)and Blend pattern(2 groups)including two sub-patterns named as “Collaborative + Dominant” and “Collaborative + Novice”pattern.Both of Dominant/Dominant and Dominant/Passive pattern were respectively reported by only one group.What’s more,seven kinds of peer scaffolding functions were found in this study.According to the frequency from high to low,they are:Providing Ideas,Providing Words and Expressions,Direction Management,Providing Feedback,Improving Participation,Frustration Control and Correcting Errors.Quantitative data and qualitative analysis were combined in order to explore the effect of interaction pattern on peer scaffolding,and the conclusions were drawn that 1)Collaborative pattern and Expert/Novice pattern are the most facilitative patterns that produce all of seven types of peer scaffolding,but even in such interaction patterns that facilitate peer scaffolding,Error Correction is rarely provided by peers;2)Dominant/Dominant pattern and Dominant/Passive pattern are the least productive ones for peer scaffolding.Direction Management plays different role in Collaborative pattern and Dominant/Dominant pattern;3)Blend pattern contains two sub-patterns,with Collaborative + Dominant pattern displaying more collaborative features and generating more peer scaffolding than Collaborative + Novice pattern.Overall,Blend pattern generates nearly equal amount of peer scaffolding to Collaborative pattern,owing to the collaborative parts in both of sub-patterns.Based on the discussion of the above results,this study comes to the conclusion:the interaction pattern has an effect on either the type or the amount of peer scaffolding,which causes various products of cooperative learning in groups.As such,in order to improve the quality of group interaction in class,teachers need to timely monitor group interaction of learners and guide students to form the most efficient group interaction pattern.At the end of the paper,the limitations of this study and suggestions for the follow-up research were provided.