Scaffolding language learning in an academic ESL classroom

© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.

Scaffolding language learning in an academic ESL classroom

Hayriye Kayi-Aydar

This study investigated how ESL learners in an academic oral skills class sought, responded to, and directed scaffolding across various classroom interactions, and how power relations affected scaffolding. The scaffolding episodes in three different types of classroom discourse were identified, analysed recursively, and interpreted within the broader class context using other data sources. The findings demonstrated that student and teacher questions scaffolded language learning and use, and positively affected students’ participation during teacher-led whole class interactions. However, scaffolding did not occur or mostly failed in small group work and student-led discussions as power struggles among students were dominant and students were less responsive with their peers. Implications and suggestions for effective scaffolding in ESL classrooms are discussed.

Sociocultural theory (see Lantolf 2000) encourages language teachers to design their classes so that learning is a socially mediated process and includes communicative activities. The aim is for teachers to develop experiences where students learn from each other through collaborative talk. In this way, the learners’ cognitive performances rise to higher levels than they would if the learners worked alone. When this supportive dialogue takes place between a student and a teacher or a more proficient peer who may help or prompt the learner through the steps of a problem or task, the process is called scaffolding (Bruner 1978). Scaffolding is especially important in language classrooms, as negotiation of meaning and linguistic assistance are crucial to students’ language development.

Scaffolding has been a topic of investigation in L2 settings for decades. The current study builds on the findings of previous studies by closely examining scaffolding across various interaction types in the same classroom. In particular, its purposes include describing, interpreting, and explaining how students seek, respond to, and direct scaffolding during (1) formal lectures, (2) small group work, and (3) student-led whole class discussions in an academic ESL advanced-level oral skills (listening and speaking) class. Furthermore, the study adds another dimension to understanding scaffolding by focusing on power relations in a classroom environment.

ELT Journal Volume 67/3 July 2013; doi:10.1093/elt/cct016

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In ESL/EFL contexts, scaffolding studies (mostly conducted in kindergarten through to twelfth-grade classrooms) describe how teachers provide scaffolded instruction, using various conversation strategies such as questioning, reformulation, repetition, or elaboration to help English language learners (ELLs) co-construct content knowledge. For example, McNeil (2012) describes how a fifth-grade teacher deployed and adapted discourse moves (for example extended wait time, model answers) so that her ELLs could construct responses. In a similar study, Gibbons (2003) highlights the role of students by showing that both teachers and learners are active participants in interactions that are effective in terms of L2 development.

Other studies examine scaffolding in interactions between language learners or learner groups with a particular focus on the impact of scaffolding on L2 development. Klingner and Vaughn (2000) investigated the frequency and means by which bilingual students helped each other and their less proficient peers in a fifth-grade English class while implementing a reading strategy. Students were placed in groups and assisted one another in understanding word meanings, getting the main idea, and asking and answering questions. The results of an English vocabulary post-test indicated that students’ performance improved significantly when compared to the pre-test results. Similar findings were reported in other studies that investigated scaffolding between ESL/EFL learners and learner groups, suggesting that the scaffolding provided by peers contributed positively to L2 development (see, for example, Huong 2007).

Although the research on scaffolding has contributed to and expanded our understanding of this practice, scaffolded talk has been examined mostly in isolation from social context. However, social interaction does not happen in a vacuum. Power relations always exist and shape interactions. The relationship between scaffolding and power relations seems to warrant more research given that power enables one person or one group to have control over other individuals or groups by constraining the contributions of non-powerful participants or their access to goods and resources (Fairclough 2001). In a classroom setting, this might explain how and why certain students gain control over the actions of others, or gain access to classroom talk and learning opportunities while others cannot. If students have limited access or fewer opportunities to talk, they will have fewer chances of being listened to and being scaffolded, and they will receive less feedback. This might negatively impact their L2 learning and use (Kayi-Aydar 2012). By focusing on the link between power relations and scaffolding, this study aims to make an empirical contribution to the literature on scaffolding.

This study was conducted in an ESL (advanced) oral skills (listening and speaking) class in an intensive English programme at a university in the south-western United States. The goal of the class was to help learners develop their oral skills so that they could be more effective in formal academic situations. Nine students (four women and five men) between the ages of 18 and 25 years, from Japan, South Korea,

Scaffolding language learning in an academic ESL classroom 325

Literature review

The studyResearch setting and participants



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Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Taiwan, India, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina, agreed to participate in the study. The participant teacher, Barbara (all names are pseudonyms), a white American in her fifties, had more than 30 years of teaching experience.

Classroom tasks varied throughout the semester, but generally comprised three types: formal lectures, small group work, and student-led whole class discussions, all of which brought students together with each other and with their teacher to interact in various ways. Formal lectures by the teacher involved teaching a new topic, such as ‘cultural styles of interaction’. During the lectures, Barbara did the majority of talking, conveying directly to students the content that she found important. For the student-run discussions, the teacher assigned one student the role of the discussion leader whose responsibilities were to start a discussion on their own topic, keep it going, and bring it to a conclusion by using the participation norms and language that they had learnt in class. Discussion topics (for example ‘Euthanasia’, ‘Fashion’) were designed to lead to greater cultural understanding. Students were also asked to work with their peers to complete certain mechanical exercises (for example grammar or vocabulary worksheets) in almost every class session.

The oral skills class was observed for 15 weeks with five hours of instruction each week. The major source of data used in this article is the classroom talk obtained through audio and video recordings. Other data sources (including interviews, student diaries, and field notes) were used to supplement the primary form of data.

During the 15-week course, I reviewed my field notes weekly and noted incidents of scaffolding to be transcribed later (see Appendix for transcription conventions). In order to decide which conversations to examine, I particularly focused on communicative events in which language was used to construct and negotiate meaning. Mercer (1995) argues that scaffolding does not only occur during concrete, physical tasks. Indeed, as he argues:

Education is not about the physical manipulation of objects. A great deal of it is learning how to use language—represent ideas, to interpret experiences, to formulate problems, and to solve them. (ibid.: 74–5)

I first of all transcribed 102 instances of scaffolding of varying lengths, categorizing them into three groups: (1) formal lectures (42 extracts), (2) small group work (31 extracts), and (3) student-led discussions (29 extracts). Next, I analysed the examples within each group, attending to what was said, how it was responded to, and what was accomplished (Rex and Schiller 2009), and formed at least one hypothesis for each example (for instance ‘Barbara effectively scaffolds learners while teaching new vocabulary using elicitation as a technique’).

The following criteria, adapted from Wood, Bruner, and Ross (1976) and Applebee (1986), further guided my analysis, especially in deciding if scaffolding was effective:

326 Hayriye Kayi-Aydar

Classroom tasks and interactions

Data collection and analysis



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1 The task is appropriate and challenging enough for the level of learners.

2 Learners own the task and are given opportunities to contribute to the learning event, so more skilled individuals are collaborators rather than evaluators.

3 Learners are motivated and their actions are directed for the continuity of the task. They are presented with useful strategies to accomplish the task.

4 Learners are encouraged to control their frustration when they face a difficulty.

5 As learners internalize procedures and routines and become more competent, they take greater responsibility and interact more.

I then compared examples to each other to see if emerging hypotheses appeared consistently across different extracts within the same interaction type as well as across different forms of interaction. Over time, I identified recurrent themes to describe students’ seeking, responding to, and directing scaffolding. I identified 88 per cent of the segments in formal lectures as effective scaffolding episodes, whereas only 29 per cent in small group work and 24 per cent in student-led discussions were effective. Lastly, I used student diaries and interview transcripts to interpret my findings.

This investigation explored two questions:

1 How do learners seek, respond to, and direct scaffolding across three different types of classroom interaction in an academic ESL oral skills class?

2 How does power impact on students’ access to and use of scaffolding?

Broadly described, students used a number of communication strategies to seek, respond to, and direct scaffolding during teacher-led instruction. During these whole class–teacher interactions, the teacher acted as a facilitator and mediator and gave almost everyone opportunities to participate. However, students did not participate effectively when they were working with their peers. In small group or student-led discussions, outspoken students dominated conversations. When the teacher’s guidance was absent, students did not seem to know how to invite their group members to the conversation, bid for a turn, or assist others to complete a task. Power-related issues were also observed several times within whole class–teacher interactions, which Barbara managed effectively, minimizing power differentials between students through numerous conversational strategies. For example, when outspoken students blurted out comments or answers without raising their hands, Barbara reminded them to bid and wait for their turns. These observations are evident in the three representative examples that I illustrate below.

During her lectures, Barbara successfully involved almost everyone in conversations, built on students’ responses, and staged her questions to scaffold students’ learning of language and content as Excerpt 1 shows:


Findings

Formal lectures



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Excerpt 1

(T = Teacher; C = Class)

1 T: Twelfth, anybody? How about Chang?

2 Chang: She was almost died. I think it’s she’s almost dead.

3 T: Correct, and in that case we have to change this word to dead.

4 JJ: What about she almost died?

5 T: That’s correct! Without was.

6 Hassan: Excuse me, I think grammatically the sentence is not correct because it

7 contained two verbs and something to deal with dependent and

8 independent clause.

9 T: Okay, let’s look at that. Let’s look at the original sentence. ((Writes it on

10 the board.)) All right, in (0.3) in the first one, do we have a verb?

11 C: Yes.

12 T: What is the verb?

13 C: Was.

14 T: Was. Here’s our verb. What’s the subject?

15 C: She.

16 T: All right, so we’ve got ‘she was almost’. What could go in that slot?

17 C: Adjective.

18 T: An adjective or something that’s being used as an adjective. So, what’s the

19 adjective form for [

20 Adriana: [Dead.

21 T: It’s going to be ‘dead’. She was almost dead. Let’s see she was almost.

22 Let’s think of some other words. She was almost finished. ((Writes it on

23 the board.))

24 Patricia: Why it should be in the past?

25 T: Pardon?

26 Malik: Why should be that verb the past?

27 T: Well, this was actually using a past participle form and using it as an

28 adjective form.




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In this extract, the criteria for effective scaffolding are met (Wood et al. op.cit.; Applebee op.cit.). First of all, Barbara’s verbal behaviour allows learners to become active participants in the discourse, enabling them to take frequent turns and ask questions, thereby contributing to the learning event. Secondly, Barbara provides enough of a challenge to maintain interest and involvement by staging the grammatical rule and asking step-by-step questions. In addition, by giving new examples (line 22) she provides further linguistic support to ensure understanding. As far as the learner contributions are concerned, it is evident from this extract that the learners and the teacher acted as collaborators and mutually constructed a piece of discourse. Finally, the students took responsibility for their own learning by asking and answering questions and constantly interacting.

In contrast, I rarely observed this type of co-constructed interaction in small group work, during which scaffolding was almost always ineffective. In the following example (Excerpt 2), students were working in small groups to correct various language-related mistakes from a worksheet-based task. The following excerpt was taken from a group that involved Adriana, Hassan, and Chang who were all known to be articulate students by Barbara and their classmates. While forming the groups, Barbara assigned Adriana the role of a teacher: Adriana’s job was to manage turn-taking in her group and assist her group members when they needed help. Barbara had already given her the answers to the questions, so that Adriana could guide her group with finding and correcting mistakes in the worksheet. The following conversation opens with Adriana, who calls on Hassan to read question number 21:

Excerpt 2

(A = Adriana; H = Hassan; C = Chang)

1 A: Twenty-one Hassan.

2 H: Yeah, opinion uhm had divided. Opinion uhm oops.

3 C: I think it’s a be verb.

4 H: Opinion is a noun and divided is a verb. Yeah? So? Opinion.

5 C: Are.

6 A: No.

7 H: Come on, we can help each other. What’s the matter?

8 C: I just tried to guess.

9 H: Opinion. Just give me the first character. ((Maintaining eye contact with

10 Adriana.))

11 A: Was divided.

12 H: O::h, opinion was divided!


Small group work



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Following the criteria of Wood et al. (op.cit.) and Applebee (op.cit.), it is possible to say that scaffolding failed here for three main reasons. First, Hassan and Chang were not given equal opportunities to contribute to the learning event as Chang’s contributions were either ignored or not valued. After Hassan read the question, Chang took the first turn to provide an answer by suggesting the replacement of ‘had’ with a ‘be’ verb, which was indeed correct. However, her input was not acknowledged by Hassan who continued to think aloud and analyse the sentence by himself. Chang took a second turn to provide a response, which was immediately rejected by Adriana (line 6). Joining the conversation again and highlighting her contribution (line 8), Chang was ignored once again. Consequently, Chang’s struggle for power and a voice in the discourse and her interest in the task ended. Second, Adriana and Hassan did not act as collaborators; Adriana acted as an evaluator (lines 6, 11) and did not provide any guidance to her group members to ensure the continuity of the interaction. Hassan’s request in line 9 and his use of ‘me’ (instead of ‘us’) in ‘Just give me the first character’ clearly indicated that he was unwilling to cooperate with Chang. Third, the lack of guidance by Adriana led to Hassan’s frustration (line 7). In brief, the conversation ended without a successful scaffold when Adriana finally gave the right answer.

As for the student-led whole class discussions, power and turn-taking always seemed to circulate among outspoken students who dominated conversations and gave almost no opportunities to others to participate. Since Barbara never participated in these student-led discussions, this lack of guidance enabled dominant students to take more powerful positions in the discourse by providing no room for others to contribute as Excerpt 3 shows. Just before the following exchange started, Adriana had talked about crime in schools in her country and said crime was not a major problem. After Adriana’s answer, Hassan, the discussion leader, called on Malik to hear his opinion:

Excerpt 3

(H = Hassan; M = Malik)

1 H: I think Malik is not agreeing with you. What’s your opinion,

2 Malik?

3 ((Malik laughs.))

4 M: The thing is that, in my home country, yes it’s not big problem, but

5 some crime problems, you know, such things like rackets.

6 I don’t know if you know what rackets mean.

7 H: Yeah.

8 M: People like ((incomprehensible)) and crooks become nearby school


Student-led discussions



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9 and ask money from students, you know, such things like that. If

10 there is no police around, you know, they can abuse the students and

11 take such things like that.

12 H: Is that clear for you? ((Looks around.)) I mean who can give us the

13 main idea what Malik said? Who can summarize

14 what Malik said? Akio, go ahead Akio, because this, go

15 ahead and try to explain.

16 ((Akio and class laugh.))

17 M: I can explain again. ((class laughs.))

18 H: Yes, please.

19 M: Yes, yes, what I was saying is that in my home country (0.2) I don’t

20 know you know what ((incomprehensible)) is?

21 H: Give us an example. Here is uhm Viresh.

22 M: Yes, yes, I mean I am a student right? I am just getting out of the

23 school and just going home and Viresh come by me and he grasps

24 me you know. [

25 H: [Attacked him and took his money his homework and his books

26 and stuff like that.

27 M: Yes, he asked for my money.

28 He asked for my goods or everything that is beautiful on me.

29 H: [Yeah, let me interrupt you. Thank you. I think that’s clear. ((Class

30 laughs.)) Appreciated. What about you Gui Min?

In this conversation, Malik and Hassan were able to construct a scaffold for each other’s performance. Malik’s question regarding the meaning of ‘rackets’ begins the scaffolded interaction. The rest of the conversation reflects the criteria for scaffolding by Wood et al. (op.cit.) and Applebee (op.cit.), as Hassan and Malik jointly contributed to the discourse by using a number of strategies such as elaboration (lines 8–10; 25–8) or giving examples (lines 21–4). Although Hassan and Malik seemed to provide linguistic support for their classmates, since the dialogue was only between them (with no contributions from other students) it is hard




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to conclude that they scaffolded their peers’ learning. Indeed, only Akio, one of the quietest students in class, was invited to join the conversation. However, due to insufficient wait time and lack of guidance, Akio could not say anything. Before other students could participate, Malik quickly assumed the leadership role by taking a turn: ‘I can explain again’. Both Hassan and Malik positioned themselves as powerful participants who were knowledgeable enough to assist others, thereby becoming the leaders and owners of knowledge.

As described in the excerpts above, scaffolding either failed or was ineffective during discussions when there was no teacher guidance. There is no single explanation for this; several interpretations, in light of the data, are possible. Firstly, some students may have perceived the classroom environment as a place for competition rather than collaboration. An example comes from the final interview with Malik:

Researcher: When there’s group work, who would you like to work with?

Malik: Akio, Haroon, Hassan, Chang. Chang maybe has the same position with Akio. I like working with her. I think she is one of my (0.1) how to say like you know when there’s a competition, how do we call people who compete against each other?

Researcher: Rivals?

Malik: She’s like a rival for me! Every time she got a good grade than me arghhh! Yes, yes! Those are the students I really focus on Akio, Chang. Very competitive.

It is possible to say that students like Malik dominated classroom conversations during student-centred activities because they focused on competition. Negotiating content or linguistic knowledge in order to contribute to the conversations, therefore, became a major challenge for others.

From a review of supplementary data, it also became clear that a difficulty in understanding others impacted upon scaffolding. In teacher-centred talk, since Barbara frequently repeated what others said or built on their utterances, students seemed to understand others’ contributions. When students did not understand their classmates due, for example, to their strong foreign accent, they might have tended not to interact further with them. Reluctance to interact with those students was described in a large number of journal entries. For example, in her diary, Patricia wrote:

Sometimes I have some problems to understand people from Japan or China in class because of their accent and I feel uncomfortable asking them several times so I finish without knowing what they want to said [sic] to me.

Given the findings and overall discussion, some teachers might wonder how they can effectively promote scaffolding in classroom interactions. Below, I provide some suggestions:


Further interpretations

Implications for teachers



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Teach and highlight features of effective scaffoldingStudents may not know how to apply conversational rules in practice. Likewise, they may not know how to fulfil the conversational roles assigned by the teacher. Therefore, teachers should frequently provide models of scaffolding, especially in pair/group activities. Rules for interaction that promote scaffolding should be set jointly by the teacher and students early in the semester.

Whenever teachers notice effective scaffolding in pair/group work, they should bring it to students’ attention and explain what made the scaffolding successful. Concrete examples will show students how they can provide meaningful assistance to their peers. Such emphasis will also teach students the importance and benefits of collaboration. If teachers videotape their own classroom events and view those video clips with students, students can reflect and comment upon their interactive behaviours and understand how effective classroom talk is structured.

Explore and discuss students’ beliefsStudents’ beliefs about group work and classroom participation may also impact upon their classroom interaction. When students do not see any value in group work or when they believe that they will not learn how to understand people with strong accents, they may give up participating. Therefore, it is important to explore students’ beliefs early in the semester. For example, teachers might do a short survey with students about attitudes, beliefs, and affective factors. Having explicit discussions about beliefs and attitudes may help students see the classroom differently.

Teach students to ask ‘pursuit questions’In classroom activities, students typically tend to focus on finding the ‘right’ answer rather than focusing on the collaborative process. Teachers might help students become more actively engaged with the collaborative process by teaching them to ask ‘pursuit questions’ (Wong and Waring 2009), such as ‘Can you explain how you arrived at that conclusion?’, which will help learners focus on the learning process. Answers to pursuit questions will also lead to further interaction, negotiation of meaning, and scaffolding.

Encourage students to keep scaffolding logsEach student can be encouraged to keep a scaffolding log to discuss how well and how often they created learning opportunities for, and provided support to, their peers. Scaffolding logs are a unique opportunity for students to learn how to monitor their own progress and talk, and take responsibility for meeting goals set jointly with the teacher. Through self-reflection, students learn how to collaborate with their peers effectively, exchange ideas, co-construct meaning, revise their understandings, and share meaning with others, thereby developing a mental perspective on their own learning (O’Malley and Pierce 1996). To further monitor scaffolding, rubrics can be used to ensure that rules, expectations, and roles are all met.




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Current L2 teaching methodologies encourage teachers to switch from the traditional teacher-centred class to a learner-centered classroom setting. Indeed, a large number of L2 studies (for example Anton 2002) indicate that learner-centred discourse provides opportunities for negotiation, which is essential for L2 learning and development. In contrast, teacher-centred discourse has been shown to provide limited opportunities for negotiation. The analysis presented here offers a different perspective. In the ESL class observed, scaffolding occurred routinely as students interacted with their teacher during various classroom activities. However, scaffolding failed or was ineffective in pair and small group work as power struggles among students were more common, and students were less responsive to their peers. It does not mean that learners were not capable of providing guided support to their peers; indeed, as we saw in Excerpt 3, learners were able to guide and help their peers through scaffolded talk. Power relations and beliefs about pair/group work may inhibit learners from engaging in dialogically constituted guided support. Teachers can overcome these challenges by adopting various techniques to help students provide support for their peers and benefit from scaffolded talk.

Final version received December 2012

ReferencesAnton, M. 2002. ‘The discourse of a learner-centered classroom: sociocultural perspectives on teacher–learner interaction in the second-language classroom’. The Modern Language Journal 83/3: 303–18.Applebee, A. N. 1986. ‘Problems in process approaches: toward 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, IL: University of Chicago Press.Bruner, J. 1978. ‘Learning how to do things with words’ in J. Bruner and A. Garton (eds.). Human Growth and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Fairclough, N. 2001. Language and Power (second edition). London: Longman.Gibbons, P. 2003. ‘Mediating language learning: teacher interactions with ESL students in a content-based classroom’. TESOL Quarterly 37/2: 247–73.Huong, L. P. H. 2007. ‘The more knowledgeable peer, target language use, and group participation’. Canadian Modern Language Review/La Revue Canadienne des Langues Vivantes 64/2: 329–50.

Kayi-Aydar, H. 2012. ‘Negotiating power in the ESL classroom: positioning to learn’. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Texas at Austin.Klingner, J. K. and S. Vaughn. 2000. ‘The helping behaviors of fifth graders while using collaborative strategic reading during ESL content classes’. TESOL Quarterly 34/1: 69–98.Lantolf, J. P. 2000. ‘Introducing sociocultural theory’ in J. P. Lantolf (ed.). Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.McNeil, L. 2012. ‘Using talk to scaffold referential questions for English language learners’. Teaching and Teacher Education 28/3: 396–404.Mercer, N. 1995. The Guided Construction of Knowledge: Talk amongst Teachers and Learners. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.O’Malley, J. M. and L. V. Pierce. 1996. Authentic Assessment for English Language Learners: Practical Approaches for Teachers. New York, NY: Addison Wesley.Rex, L. A. and L. Schiller. 2009. Using Discourse Analysis to Improve Classroom Interaction. London: Routledge.Wong, J. and H. Z. Waring. 2009. ‘“Very good” as a teacher response’. ELT Journal 63/3: 195–203.


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Wood, D., J. S. Bruner, and G. Ross. 1976. ‘The role of tutoring in problem solving’. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 17/2: 89–100.

The authorHayriye Kayi-Aydar is an Assistant Professor of Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Education/

TESOL in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Her research interests include positioning and positional identities, learning opportunities, and social dynamics of classroom discourse.Email: [email protected]

AppendixTranscription conventions

[ Overlapping talk(0.2) Pauses in seconds: Lengthening of a sound/syllable(( )) Transcriber’s comment or contextual information




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Scaffolding language learning in an academic ESL classroom