![]() ![]() ![]() When used effectively, scaffolding can help a student learn content they wouldn't have been able to process on their own. Vygotsky's scaffolding is a theory that focuses on a student's ability to learn information through the help of a more informed individual. Teachers who are introducing new material to their students can usually determine when some students need more guidance to comprehend the material. Served its purpose.A woman sits at a table writing on a piece of paper next to a large chart entitled "Vygotsky Scaffolding." There are three sections of the circular chart with the following titles and information:Ĭan Do With Help: Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)Ĭan Do Alone: Zone of Actual Development (ZAD) Important: Like the real scaffolding in everyday life, visual scaffolding can and should be removed when it has The Smartboard and associated software such as PowerPoint are excellent tools for the production and viewing of content that is both interesting and comprehensible. When students can see an image of what the teacher is describing or see the key words that the teacher is explaining, this not only serves to make the input considerably more comprehensible, but serves to remove the affective filter which results from the fear or boredom that comes of understanding very little in class. ESL students greatly benefit from the type of scaffolding that makes extensive use of visual aids – hence the term The importance of visual scaffolding for ESL studentsĮSL students are particularly dependent on scaffolding, but often the purely oral scaffolding undertaken by the teacher is not enough. The Writing Process is another prime example of scaffolding. Typical examples are the activation of background knowledge at the beginning of the lesson or a brief review of key vocabulary at the end of it. Scaffolding includes all the things that teachers do already when they predict the kinds of difficulty that the class or individual students in it will have with a given task. Jerome Bruner, researcher in cognitive and educational psychology, coined the term scaffolding as a description for the kind of assistance given by the teacher or more knowledgeable peer in providing comprehensible input and moving the learner into the zone of proximal development. Read more about Krashen's comprehensible input hypothesis. This simply means that a ESL student who is nervous or bored in class will learn neither subject content nor new language, even if the input is comprehensible. However, Krashen further claims that no language will acquired in the presence of the affective filter. Indeed, Krashen states that comprehensible input is a sufficient condition for language acquisition. He called this gap i+1, where i is the current level of proficiency.Ĭlearly, an ESL student cannot cope with or learn from language input that is at i+6 or i+13. Stephen Krashen, a researcher into second language acquisition, devised a similar notion for the kind of input that an ESL student needs in order to make progress in acquiring English. Source: Krashen: Theory of second language acquisition Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist, introduced the concept of a zone of proximal development (ZPD), which is the notional gap between a.) the learner's current developmental level as determined by independent problem-solving ability and b.) the learner's potential level of development as determined by the ability to solve problems under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers. Visual scaffolding is an excellent way to provide comprehensible input to ESL students so that not only will they learn the essential subject content but also they will make progress in their acquisition of English. Visual scaffolding is support that includes images and words that can be seen as well as heard. Scaffolding is the term given to the provision of appropriate assistance to students in order that they may achieve what alone would have been too difficult for them. The theoretical basis for workshops is provided by three renowned researchers in cognitive / educational psychology and second language acquisition: Vygotsky, Krashen and Bruner. The primary purpose was to demonstrate with multiple examples how the Smartboard could be used to help ESL students understand subject content, and thereby indirectly develop their English proficiency. ![]() This page was prepared to accompany a series of workshops that I held for mainstream teachers at Frankfurt International School. This page contains information about how teachers can scaffold tasks to make them manageable by ESL students. ![]()
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