Scaffolding
The concept of scaffolding has its origins in the work
of the psychologist Vygotsky as well as in studies of
early language learning. Bruner (1978) believed that
for learning to take place, appropriate social
interactional frameworks must be provided. In the case
of the young child learning language, the instructional
component consists of the caregiver (normally the
mother) providing a framework to allow the child to
learn. To do this, the caregiver should always be one
step ahead of the child (Vygotsky's zone of proximal
development), and by using contexts that are extremely
familiar and routinized the caregiver can facilitate the
child's learning. These highly predictable routines,
such as reading books together or conversations at bath
time or meals, offer the caregiver and child a structure
within which the caregiver can continually raise her
expectations of the child's performance. For Bruner,
this meant specifically the child's linguistic
performance, because, he argued, it is within these
formats that children learn how to use language.
Cazden (1983) adopted Bruner's use of the term
scaffolding, but distinguished between vertical and
sequential scaffolding. Vertical scaffolding involves
the adult extending the child's language by asking
further questions. So in response to the child's
utterance ' cow' , she might say 'Yes, that's a cow.
What does the cow say?', or she might ask for an
elaboration 'And what did we see when we went to the
farm today?' Whereas sequential scaffolding is the
scaffolding found in the games played with children at
meals, bath times, and so on.
Applebee and Langer (1983) used the notion of
instructional scaffolding as a way to describe essential
aspects of formal instruction. In their view, learning is
a process of gradual internalization of routines and
procedures available to the learner from the social and
cultural context in which the learning takes place. In
instructional scaffolding the language learner is
assisted in a new task by a more skilled language user
who models the language task to be used verbally
and/or in writing. As well as through modelling,
scaffolding is provided by leading or probing
questions to extend or elaborate the knowledge the
learner already possesses. Rather than evaluating the
learner's answers, the teacher is supporting,
encouraging, and providing additional props. As the
learner's competence grows, so the scaffolding is
gradually reduced until the learner is able to function
autonomously in that task and generalize to similar
circumstances.
There are five criteria for effective scaffolding
(Applebee 1986):
1. Student ownership of the learning event. The
instructional task must allow students to make their
own contribution to the activity as it evolves.
2. Appropriateness of the instructional task. This
means that the tasks should build upon the
knowledge and skills the student already possesses,
but should be difficult enough to allow new
learning to occur.
3. A structured learning environment. This will
provide a natural sequence of thought and
language, thus presenting the student with useful
strategies and approaches to the task.
4. Shared responsibility. Tasks are solved jointly in
the course of instructional interaction, so the role of
the teacher is more collaborative than evaluative.
5. Transfer of control. As students internalize new
procedures and routines, they should take a greater
responsibility for controlling the progress of the
task such that the amount of interaction may
actually increase as the student becomes more
competent.
For Applebee, one of the most appealing features of
these principles is that they provide a new way to think
about familiar teaching routines, rather than a
wholesale abandonment of the past.
Other views on scaffolding, such as Long and Sato
(1984) see conversational scaffolding, in particular, as
the crucible of language acquisition. Hatch (1978) has
also argued that language learning evolves out of
learning how to carry out conversation and that
syntactic constructions develop out of conversation.
Rather than assuming that the learner first learns a
form and then uses that form in discourse, Hatch
assumes that the learner first learns how to do
conversation, how to interact verbally, and out of this
interaction syntactic forms develop. Specifically in
building a conversation with a partner (vertical
construction), the learner establishes the prototypes for
later syntactic development (horizontal construction).
However, Sato (1986) makes the point that even if the
collaborative discourse of scaffolding is credited with
making a positive contribution to syntactic structures,
what is difficult to determine is the role played in the
acquisition of morphological features (such as the
regular past tense). It is possible that collaborative
discourse plays a significant part in early acquisition,
but it is doubtful whether all interlanguage rules can
emerge in this way.
Received August 1993
Further reading
Applebee, A. N. 1986. 'Problems in process
approaches: Towards a reconceptualization of
process instruction' in A. R. Petrosky and D.
Bartholomae (eds.) The Teaching of Writing. 85th
Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of
Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Key concepts in ELT 101
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Applebee, A. N. and J. A. Langer, 1983.
'Instructional scaffolding: Reading and writing as
natural language activities. Language Arts, 60/2.
Bruner, J. 1978. 'The role of dialogue in language
acquisition' In A. Sinclair, R., J. Jarvelle, and W. J.
M. Levelt (eds.) The Child's Concept of
Language. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Cazden, C. 1983. 'Adult assistance to language
development: scaffolds, models and direct
instruction' in R. P. Parker and F. A. Davies (eds.)
Developing Literacy. Delaware: International
Reading Association.
Hatch, E. 1978. 'Discourse analysis and second
language acquisition' in E. Hatch (ed.) Second
Language Acquisition: A Book of Reading.
Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House.
Long, M. and Sato, C. 1984. 'Methodological issues
in interlanguage studies: an interactionist
perspective' in A. Davies, C. Criper and A.
Howatt (eds.) Interlanguage. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Sato, C. 1986. 'Conservation and interlanguage
development: Rethinking the connection' in R.
Day (ed.) Talking to Learn: Conversation in
Second Language Acquisition. Rowley, Mass.:
Newbury House.
Joseph Foley, Department of English Language and
Literature, National University of Singapore
102 Joseph Foley
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