MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ HOANG PHUONG TRANG NHUNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SCAFFOLDING IN PEER INTERACTION BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING HUE, 2013 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ HOANG PHUONG TRANG NHUNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO SCAFFOLDING IN PEER INTERACTION BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60140111 SUPERVISOR: ASSOC. LE PHAM HOAI HUONG HUE, 2013 i BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ HOÀNG PHƯƠNG TRANG NHUNG ĐIỀU TRA VỀ VIỆC HỌC CÓ TRỢ GIÚP (SCAFFOLDING) TRONG TƯƠNG TÁC GIỮA CÁC SINH VIÊN CHUYÊN NGÀNH TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HUẾ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60140111 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS. LÊ PHẠM HOÀI HƯƠNG HUẾ, 2013 ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published elsewhere.
Author Hoang Phuong Trang Nhung iii ABSTRACT This research paper investigated the second-year English majors‟ perceptions towards peer scaffolding and its use in peer interaction. In addition, it focused on identifying the scaffolding features made by students in peer interaction. The research was conducted with second-year English majors at Hue University College of Foreign Languages. Data analysis involved both qualitative and quantitative approaches.
The data collection tools included questionnaire, audio recording, and interviews. The students were invited to take part in completing the questionnaire. Among these 100 students, 10 pairs of students were asked to talk with some tasks of given topics and all the conversations were recorded. These students were also interviewed later to get insight into students‟ perceptions about scaffolding.
The findings revealed that students were in favor of scaffolding in peer interaction as they felt more comfortable to talk, shared ideas and assisted each other rather than the feeling unconfident and hesitative when they talked with teachers or in front of class. The advantages and disadvantages of peer scaffolding which were included in the finding of the study were highly regarded by students. Last but not least, the findings represented the scaffolding features made by students when they scaffolded each other. Based on the findings, the study proposed some practical implications for teachers and students in teaching and learning speaking English using peer scaffolding.
iv Acknowledgements I am fully aware that my thesis can never be finished without the help of others during the process of writing. Therefore, on this occasion I would like to express her greatest appreciation to the following: To begin with, I owe a debt of deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Le Pham Hoai Huong for her precious suggestions and whole-hearted guidance which help me fulfill this research paper. I also feel beholden to students from Hue University Hue College of Foreign Languages for providing me the most favorable conditions to collect the needed information.
I would like to show my great appreciation to all teachers at the English Department of Hue College of Foreign Languages for providing me with necessary materials. I also want to say a word of thanks to my closest friends, my dear colleagues in Laguna Lang Co for their support and encouragement throughout my ups and downs. Finally and always, my sense of heartfelt gratitude goes to my family for their indispensable support for me to complete the study with all my best. v TABLE OF CONTENTS SUB COVER PAGE.
i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. v TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. viii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS.
Aims of the study. Scope of the study. Organization of the study. Scaffolding and its theoretical concepts.
Vygotsky‟s sociocultural theory. The notion of the ZPD. Advantages and disadvantages of scaffolding. Scaffolding strategies and features.
Studies on scaffolding. Participants and research sites. Data collection tools. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
Findings from the questionnaire. English majors‟ perceptions towards scaffolding in peer interaction. English majors‟ perceptions towards Vygotsky‟s socio-cultural theory. English majors‟ perceptions towards the notion of ZPD.
English majors‟ perceptions towards scaffolding and peer scaffolding. English majors‟ perceptions towards advantages and disadvantages of scaffolding. English majors‟ perceptions towards scaffolding strategies. Interviews with students.
English majors‟ perceptions towards peer scaffolding. English majors‟ perceptions towards the advantages and disadvantages of peer scaffolding. English majors‟ perceptions towards scaffolding strategies. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS.
Summary of the key findings. Limitations of the research .55 APPENDICES vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. EFL: English as a Foreign Language 2. HUCFL: Hue University College of Foreign Language 4.
SPSS: Statistical Package for Social Sciences 5. ZPD: Zone of Proximal Development viii LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS Table 3. Summary of data collection tools. Summary of the questionnaire.
The mean score of the questionnaire. The mean score of cluster 1. Summary of students‟ responses to each item in the cluster 1. The mean score of cluster 1.
Summary of students‟ responses to each item in the cluster 1. The mean score of the cluster 1. Summary of students‟ responses to each item in the cluster 1. The mean score of the cluster 2.
The mean score of cluster 3 .1: Zone of proximal development .2: The interaction between the learners/child and teacher/parents. Students‟ responses to advantages and disadvantages of peer scaffolding .2 Students‟ responses to scaffolding strategies .36 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Scaffolding refers to a support or assistance that the expert provides to the novice (Wood et al. Davis and Miyaki (2004) consider scaffolding as a part of a larger set of methodology in activity-based learning which consists of modeling (demonstrating), scaffolding, coaching, reflection, and exploration.
Scaffolding allows teachers to provide cueing, questioning, coaching, and help students complete a task before tackling it independently (Pearson, 1999). In other words, scaffolding is an effective way to help students deal with a task as it lends support to help bridge a gap between what students do know and what they do not know, but necessary to know. There are several benefits of scaffolding or peer scaffolding. Fawcett and Garton (2005) assert that peer collaboration has advantages which came from the participation in interaction and verbal communication when peers explored each other‟s thoughts and constructed new perspectives.
Peer scaffolding is said to play an important part in ongoing development oral fluency in speaking (Ohta, 2000). To sum up, scaffolding in general and peer scaffolding in particular contributes an effective and efficient way to make students learn each other in some aspects of learning such as vocabulary development, or thematic construction. Furthermore, studies relating to scaffolding in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classroom have been well researched such as Riazi and Rezaii‟s (2011) study investigating the effect of scaffolding on EFL students‟ writing ability or exploring the most effective scaffolding strategies used by teachers and students to improve reading comprehension by Chi (2007). In Vietnam, however, there is still little research focusing scaffolding and how to use scaffolding so as to promote students‟ English proficiencies especially speaking skill which is considered as one of the major productive skills of all the four skills of a language in Vietnam.
Vietnamese students, nevertheless, seem to be good at grammar but rather bad at speaking. In 1 speaking classes, a lot of Vietnamese students even some English majors find it difficult to speak English. This matter could come from various factors. Vietnamese students may have passive attitudes to learning.
Le (1999) stated that they [Vietnamese students] are expected to sit in silence unless the teacher calls them to speak individually. Moreover, they seem to be very reluctant to express ideas or opinions especially those contradictory to their teacher‟s in front of the class (Nguyen, 2005). Also, their language proficiencies and background knowledge of a topic tend to be relatively restricted (Nguyen, 2009). From her interview data, one student confided that he did not know much about many fields in order to speak.
Another student said that she got stuck in brainstorming the deeper knowledge when she lost her chance to give “easy” answers due to her lack of confidence (p. It indicates one reality that some students do not have a wide vocabulary to discuss the topics at length, and they are not confident enough to express their own thoughts when they have some ideas in their mind. In fact, when students are faced with a speaking task assigned by their teachers, they are not often willing to cope with the task individually. If they do answer the questions, they prefer to do in pairs or groups.
Littlewood (2000) found that Vietnamese students want to do together with their fellow students in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. All things considered, it is better to ask students to work in groups or in pairs so as to maximize one‟s strengths and minimize one‟s weaknesses, and improve students‟ speaking skill through scaffolding. Although there is agreement that peer scaffolding plays an important role in aiding students to speak better in terms of fluency, vocabulary growth and shared knowledge, studies focusing on scaffolding in peer interaction by English students are scant. The gap what students think about peer scaffolding, and what features of peer scaffolding made by students in dialogues in foreign language classrooms in Vietnam are still left open.
Thus, the researcher would like to conduct the study whose purposes are to investigate the standpoints of students about peer scaffolding, its use and find out its features in dialogues entitled “AN INVESTIGATION INTO 2 SCAFFOLDING IN PEER INTERACTION BY ENGLISH MAJORS AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES”. Aims of the study The purposes of this paper are to: - investigate the students‟ perceptions towards peer scaffolding - explore the use of scaffolding in peer interaction, if any - identify the scaffolding features made by students in dialogues 1. Scope of the study In this study, 100 second-year English majors who come from 3-4 speaking classes at Hue University College of Foreign Languages (hereafter HUCFL) were invited to take part in completing the questionnaire. Among these 100 students, 10 pairs of students were interviewed to get insight into students‟ perceptions about scaffolding.
These students were asked to do some tasks of given topics and all the conversations were recorded. Significance The research is expected to contribute to theory as well as practice of scaffolding. Regarding the theoretical contribution, the findings of this current study are expected to extend understanding of scaffolding in dialogues and will contribute to the advancement of scaffolding in speaking and in English learning in general. This study also hopes to add to the literature review on scaffolding for further research.
Additionally, the researcher expects students can raise their awareness of scaffolding and its features. Hopefully, they can learn from each other via scaffolding and stretch their own capacity boundaries in terms of vocabulary development as well as shared knowledge. Research questions The research is aimed at solving these following questions a. What are English majors‟ perceptions of scaffolding in peer interaction? b.
What do students think about the advantages and disadvantages of scaffolding in peer interaction? c. How is peer scaffolding used in interaction by English majors? 3 1. Organization of the study The plan of this paper is as follows. Chapter 1 describes the rationale for the study on the use of scaffolding in peer interaction of English majors at HUCFL.
The research questions and the aims of the study are also mentioned in this chapter. Finally, this chapter offers the significance of the study and research organization. In chapter 2, some theoretical concepts are presented.