IMPROVING CHILDRENS CONCEPT IN COMMUNICATION

THROUGH SCAFFOLDING TECHNIQUE

I Made Rai Jaya Widanta - Politeknik Negeri Bali (PNB)

I. Background and Problem
Teaching English to children is far more challenging in term of the way
how the language should be taught, the materials should be designed, and which
major skills of the four should be focused more than the others. The way the
children learn the language and the way to teach it, obviously depends on their
development stages. Children have rich but unsystematic, disorganized, and
spontaneous concepts. Children have the advantage of being great mimics, are
often unselfconscious, and are usually prepared to enjoy the activities the
teacher has prepared for them. One of factors why they can have a high degree
of motivation and find the English class is enjoyable as well as a stimulating
experience is by setting that the activity should be largely orally based. It means
that listening activity will take up a large proportion of the class time.
Speaking activity doesnt guarantee that children will be maintained
learners who can release their boredom, otherwise there is a technique properly
implemented in the teaching. Dialog, in some parts, may be a boring part of the
lesson. Children easily get stressed because of the teacher monotonous
instructing method. The basic problem of children in speaking lesson is that
they are not able to construct sentence corresponding to the structure of the
question of their teachers. They tend to use the structure they have been
remembering to answer all types of question their teachers ask. They are not
aware of what structure to use but really concern with the piece of information
they will give.
One technique which advantages children in learning speaking is
scaffolding technique. Scaffolding is a technique of adapting the level of
support during the teaching-learning process using dialog to suit students
competence (Santrock, 2001:61), types of support that can be given through
interaction within a childs zone of proximal development (Bruner and Ross,
1978). This technique is aimed to actively help children, through dialog,
construct better sentences or expression in communication. To support the
children in communication activities teacher should give them inputs which is
comprehensible. There are many ways that childrens language acquisition and
learning can be supported. Childrens language learning is advanced through
social interaction and experiences based on the context or situation. Adult
provide children with language (permanent meaning of words), not with
thinking itself (Vygotsky, 1978, 1962). In doing scaffolding teachers, through
social interaction and experiences based on the context or situation, should
model the language (words), a complete sentences using the students
information.
Such case in teaching English to children happens in Intensive English
Course (IEC) Denpasar. Children class students easily get bored with their
learning since their understanding to the lesson is disturbed by their
misconception that teachers are intensively attracted to find better way to cope
it with. Teachers still find difficult technique to design their teaching which is
more effective, comprehensible. This case is really crucial to solve since it will
give bad impact to student motivation, willingness to learn, and self-confidence.
This research was trying to implement scaffolding technique to improve
students understanding on the concept of the language (in this case grammar) to
enable them to construct good sentences in speaking in a relatively shorter time
than they had experiences in order to increase their learning motivation, self
confidence and willingness to learn.

II. Related Studies and Literature Review
2.1 Related Studies
2.1.1 Scaffolding
To comprehend what scaffolding is, here are some perspectives of this
technique from experts. Jerry Pike define scaffolding as teacher strategies that
help students reach what is otherwise inaccessible. Denise Bacchus gives a clear
cut on it as building on prior knowledge. Jack Ullom shared the dual perspective
of providing information in both vertical and horizontal perspective. Scaffolding
is an instructional technique whereby teacher models the desired learning
strategy or task, then gradually shift responsibility to students. In doing this,
teachers provide tasks that enable the learner to build on prior knowledge and
internalized new concepts. The teacher must provide assisted activities that are
just one level beyond the level of learner.
Scaffolding represents the helpful interaction between adult and child
that enable the child to do something beyond his or her independent efforts. It
also represents opportunities for students to be successful before moving into
unfamiliar territory. This type of instruction minimizes failure, which decreases
frustration, especially for students with special learning needs. This activity is
time-consuming for teachers if it is done correctly. However, this activity also
necessitates that teacher give up some control in the classroom in order for
learners to move at their own pace. Therefore teachers who engage in
scaffolding must be well-trained in order to create effective activities and tasks
for all students.
Scaffolding is often used in order to support problem based learning
(PBL). Learners in the class room often become researchers and work in small
groups to analyze problems, determine solutions, and evaluate problems in PBL
(Hoffman and Ritchie, 1997).
In order to provide young learners with an understanding of how to link
old information or familiar situation with new knowledge, the instructors must
guide learners through verbal and nonverbal communication and model
behavior. Research on the practice of using scaffolding shows that parents and
teachers can facilitate this advancement through the zone of proximal
development by providing activities and task such as: motivate and enlist the
childs interest related to the task; simplify the task to make it more manageable
and achievable for a child; provide some directions in order to help the child
focuses on achieving the goal; clearly indicate differences between the childs
work and the standard or desired solution; reduce frustration and risk; and
model and clearly define the expectations of the activities to be performed. In
educational setting, scaffolding may include models, cues, prompts, hints,
partial solution, think-aloud modeling, and direct instruction.

2.1.2 Types of Scaffolding
According to Paul, scaffolding helps students reach higher level of
understanding. He then divides this technique into two parts, modeling and
bridging. Modeling technique can be demonstrated by Think-Pair-Share activity.
Bridging technique is one of the ways a teacher can tap prior knowledge. The
other techniques proposed in addition to those are schema building (graphic
organizers), meta-cognitive development, and reformatting. On the other hand
Patricia Chavez Nunez introduced a mind-mapping schema.

2.1.3 Characteristic of Scaffolding
Jamie McKenzie proposes eight characteristics of scaffolding instruction
in order for teachers to engage in scaffolding actively, such as: (1) provides
clear direction and reduces student confusion. Prior to assigning instruction that
involve scaffolding, a teacher must try to anticipate any problem that might
arise and write step-by-step instructions for how learners must complete tasks;
(2) clarifies purposes i.e. scaffolding doesnt leave the learners wondering why
they are engaging in activities. The teacher explains the purpose of the lesson
and why this is important. This type of guided instruction allows learners to
understand how they are building on prior knowledge; (3) keeps student on task.
Students are aware of the instruction in which the lesson is heading, and they
can make choices about how to proceed with the learning process; (4) offers
assessment to clarify expectations. Teachers who create scaffolded lesson set
forth clear expectation from the beginning of the activity using exemplars or
rubrics; (5) point students to worthy sources. Teachers supply resources for
research and learning to decrease confusion, frustration, and wasted time; (6)
reduces uncertainty, surprise and disappointment. A well-prepared activity or
lesson is tested or evaluated completely before implementation to reduce
problems and maximize learning potential; (7) deliver efficiency. Little time is
wasted in the scaffolded lesson, and all learning goals are achieved efficiently;
(8) create momentum. The goal of scaffolding is to inspire learners to want to
learn more and increase their knowledge and understanding.
Martha Larkin introduce eight guidelines teachers most commonly follow
when developing scaffolded lessons; (1) focus on curriculum goals to develop
opportunities task; (2) define a shared for all students to achieve through
engagement in specific task; (3) identify individual student needs and monitor
growth based on those abilities; (4) provide instruction that is modified or
adapted to each students ability; (5) encourage student to remain focused
through out the task and activities; (6) provide clear feedback in order for
student to monitor their own progress; (7) create an environment where student
feel safe taking risk; (8) promote responsibility for independent learning.
2.1.4 Instructional Scaffolding
Scaffolds are temporary structure that physically support workers while
they complete jobs that would other wise be impossible. Scaffolds provide
workers with both a place to work and the means to reach work area that they
could not access on their own (Herber and Herber, 1993:138).
Instructional scaffolding is a teaching strategy that was cleverly named
for the practical resemblance it bears to the physical scaffolds used on
construction site. The strategy consists of teaching new skills by engaging
students collaboratively in tasks that would be too difficult for them to complete
on their own. The instructor initially provides extensive instructional support or
scaffolding to continually assist the students in building their understanding of
new content and process.
There are two major steps of scaffolding techniques, (1) development of
instructional plans functioning to lead the students from what they already know
to a deep understanding of new materials (Turnbull, Shank and Leal, 1999:641-
642), (2) execution of the plans, where in the instructor provide support to the
students at every step of learning process (Turnbull, 1999:641-642). Scaffolding
plan must be written carefully that each new skill or information that the
students learn serve as a logical next step based on what they already know or
are able to do. The instructor must prepare both to continuously assess student
learning and to connect new information to the students prior knowledge. In the
execution process, the instructor models the task in its entirety. Having
observed their instructors model, the students begin guided practice by
performing parts of the task independently. The instructor assists his or her
students with their early practice and continuously assesses their learning. As
the students gain experience with and understanding of new information or
tasks, the instructor increases the complexity of guided practice activities and
gradually reduces his or her support. By the end of a well-executed scaffolding
plan, the students perform the entire tasks with little or no support from their
instructor (Turnbull, 1999:461-462).

2.1.5 Techniques of Instructional Scaffolding
The instructors goal in employing scaffolding techniques is to offering
just enough assistance to guide the students toward independence and self-
regulation. To do so there are five different scaffolding techniques proposed,
such as (1) modeling of desired behavior, (2) offering explanation, (3) inviting
student participation, (4) verifying and clarifying student understandings, and
(5) inviting students to contribute clues (Hongan and Pressley, 1997:17-36).
This technique may either be integrated or used individually, depending on the
material being taught.
Modeling is the first step in instructional scaffolding. It is defined as
teaching behavior that shows how one should feel, think or act within a given
situation This technique is differentiated into three types, such as think-aloud
modeling, talk-aloud modeling, and performance modeling. Think-aloud
modeling is verbalization of the thought process used to solve a particular
problem. An instructor might verbalize his or her strategies for finding the main
idea of a paragraph. Talk-aloud modeling is a demonstration of task completion
accompanied by verbalization of the thought process or problem solving
strategy that brought the modeler to her conclusion. Performance modeling is
simply demonstration of the task to be completed (Hogan and Pressley,
1997:20).
Offering explanation is very important to do by instructor. It should be
explicit statement adjusted to fit the learners emerging understandings about
what is being learned, why and when it is used, how it is used. Explanation may
be given repeatedly at the beginning of the lesson.
Inviting student participation is done by engaging the students in learning
providing her with ownership of learning experience. The teacher might write a
decimal point on the board and ask students to identify the next step in
converting a fraction to a decimal. The students might be invited to participate
verbally or she might be asked to come to the board and contribute her ideas or
strategy in writing.
As students gain experience with the new material, it is important for the
instructor to continuously assess their understanding and offer feedback.
Verifying and clarifying student understanding is essentially offering
affirmative feedback to reasonable understandings, or corrective feedback to
unreasonable understanding. At last, inviting student to contribute clues on what
the have already studied is the last but not least. This activity will be able to
crosscheck whether students really master the topic or not.

2.2 Literature Review
Nam Hee Cho, with his had research entitled The Scaffolding Technique
in Interactive Spoken Feedback on EAP Writing, found that spoken teacher
feedback can make it possible to engage in a wider range of discourse to support
a joint construction of knowledge. The aim of this study is to examine the ways
in which teachers construct feedback in spoken interaction. In this study, three
native speaker teachers provided spoken feedback on 24 non-native speaker
student essays in a UK university EAP writing program. 32 tutorial sessions
were video/audio recorded during the second semester in 2006. The date
obtained was analyzed using the CA approach. The analysis suggests that
scaffolding techniques which the teachers use in the spoken interaction are: (1)
teacher often invite the student elaboration through providing possible examples
(2) teacher often hand over a task or an issue to the students, and (3) teacher
often create a supportive and stimulating learning environment. When the
teacher use scaffolding technique, student tend to make an active role and be
given opportunities to develop their own understanding. To conclude, it appears
that scaffolding techniques which teachers use in spoken feedback interaction
makes it possible to create language learning opportunities so as to develop
awareness of the second language learners own personal and internal strategies.
III. Analysis and Result
3.1 Data and Data Source
The research was done at Intensive English Course (IEC) at Denpasar
city. IEC is one of English courses that provides children class. There are
number of levels provided for children learning English, arranged from
Elementary until Advance levels. Before being decided which level some one
should be in, candidate students should take placement test to recognize his or
her level of English competence. This is done to place them in a group in which
they will find no extreme gaps of ability difference on their prior knowledge
that is English proficiency among them. This is aimed to ease to manage the
teaching process, material designing, and assessment for the class.
Course materials are taken from book as a resource that every student is
obligated to buy. However teachers are requested to use supplement or
supported materials accordingly to make students English learning fun,
effective. In order to realize this teacher are to be creative to design tasks for
students to work so that students well be able to understand the topic. The class
takes place 90 minutes every meeting. This duration is considered enough for
them to master a single topic.

3.2 Data Collection and Data Analysis
The class observation was divided into two as number of the topics set.
The first observation was done for two classes, Children 5A of 6 students and
Children 5B of 8 students. And the second observation was also done for those
classes. There were two topics prepared for those two meeting. DO/DOES V1
and BE N to talk about people jobs was taught in the first meeting and S-V2-
Comp., Did S V1-comp. and WH Did S V1 Comp. to talk about past
activity was taught on the second meeting. On the first observation, Children 5A
was taught with scaffolding technique while the Children 5B was taught with
the commonly used method. On the second meeting, Children 5A was taught
with the commonly used method and Children 5B was taught with scaffolding
technique.
On the first observation the teacher (the researcher himself) prepare topic
people jobs with Do/Does V1 and Be N. In Children 5A the teacher used
scaffolding technique. To start the lesson the teacher opened the teaching by
showing picture cards of people doing activities completed with names of job or
occupation shown at the bottom of each card. Students were shown the cards
and were asked the question What do you do?. In this case modeling technique
of scaffolding was implemented. Without being worried to get grammatically
correct or incorrect answers, the teacher kept going ask every student to get
their ideas. After all students got chance to answer the questions, teacher than
clarified which sentence was grammatically correct or incorrect. Then the
teacher corrected the students answers, explained why that was correct or
incorrect, and wrote them on the board in order for the students to be aware
during the next practice. This stage was called offering explanation technique of
scaffolding. The teacher started again the same activity to check students
comprehension. All students were given number of cards were asked to
interview their friends in the class with the same model of dialog. The students
performed much better improvement in constructing proper sentences than they
had done in the beginning of lesson. This activity was carried out about 15
minutes. At last teacher explained the concept. The next activity was the same
with question What does he/she do? with answer She/he is a N. In this case
each student was given some cards. They had to go around and ask their friends
what was the man or woman in their cards jobs. Students were actively went
around and asked their friends.
The second activities bore better understanding in them since they made
fewer mistakes. Lastly, the teacher give general concept of using DO and DOES
with V1 and BE with N. This activity was continued with discussing grammar
part and continued to doing exercises. The teacher explained in detail grammar
part used in the unit. It was done by the technique of inviting students
participation in answering teachers question for concept checking. As they got
the concept, they were then asked to work out the exercises provided in the
book. This stage was ended by checking students answers. In this case the
teacher crosschecked the student understanding. This stage is called verifying
and clarifying students understanding.
The last stage was the controlled practice activity with information-gaps
technique. Students were divided into two groups, A and B. Group A was given
handout A and group B ware given hand out B. As they had their own hand out
students were asked to go around and interview their opposite group to fill in
the gaps on people jobs. Teacher observed them by going around and facilitating
them in case of any questions from them. Finally, the teacher evaluated and
gave comment on their work and gave them chance to formulize their thought on
the lesson. Every one contributed similar formula on the topic. By scaffolding
technique of inviting students to make clues, teacher was fully able to measure
how the students understanding on the topic.
Unlike comprehension shown by Children 5A class, Children 5B class
who were taught with commonly used method had shown relatively slower and
mistaken understanding on the concept. Without scaffolding technique initiated
by the teacher at every part of lesson they could not show significant progress as
Children 5A had done. They could not model and practice the dialog promptly.
They did not perform the controlled and freer practice fluently in a way that
Children 5A did, since they seemed to be still confused with the concept of
using DO/DOES V1 and BE N. The matter was still on which subject should
use DO or DOES, which subject use V1 with or without e or es, and which
subject should use IS, AM or ARE. Consequently, they could not formulize their
understanding in the form of formulas by which they understand the concept.
The second observation was done with the same stages with different
topic. However, to assure if the scaffolding technique was really potential and
benefited students, the scaffolding technique was implemented to Children 5B,
while Children 5A was taught with the method implemented for Children 5B on
the first observation. The result showed similar thing that the class taught with
scaffolding technique contributed much better achievement.

IV. Summary
Seeing form the results showed by the four classes and after comparing
the achievement classes taught with scaffolding technique with those with
commonly used technique it can be concluded that the teaching technique is
really potential to built and improve students understanding on the concept.
Having better understanding on concept enable students to perform better
fluency and of course accuracy in speaking.

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