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Scaffolding teaching strategies:

Scaffoding through language

Index
1. Interact with children
2. Provide message ‘redundancy’ (or message ‘abundancy’)Use demonstrations,
modelling, role-playing
3.Use extralinguistic information to make English comprehensible
4.Use paralinguistic information to make English comprehensible
5.Present new information in the context of known information
6.Paraphrase often
7.Elaborate often
8.Recast (or Reformulate) often
9.Expand often
10. Use simple structures and avoid too complex structures
11. Repeat the same sentence patterns and routines
12. Vary the sentence patterns and routines once the children are ready for it
13. Elicit language from learners
14. Ask open-ended and referential questions
15. Tailor questions for different levels of language competence and
participation
16. Respect the child's stages of linguistic development
17. Treat code-switching as a normal language phenomenon
18. Check for understanding
19. Use, provide opportunities for and stimulate extended discourse
20. Think aloud (and get learners to think aloud)

01. Interact with children

The nature of communication between teacher and students and among students is
critical for second language learning. Children learn to interact in English by
interacting with her/his teachers. “Since communication is a process, it is
insufficient for students to simply have knowledge of target language forms,
meanings and functions. Students must be able to apply this knowledge in
negotiating meaning. It is through the interaction between speaker and
listener (or reader and writer) that meaning becomes clear” (Larsen-Freeman, 1986:
123). This makes us point out that the main goal when handling speaking in class
should be to help the learner to produce fluent and accurate language appropriate to
the speech situation. To attain this goal, the learner must receive comprehensible
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input to act on in order to activate and develop his/her own learning mechanisms.
However, the concept of comprehensible input is not enough in itself to explain the
development of second/foreign language learning. Learners also need opportunities
to interact with other speakers and to negotiate meaning through interaction (Ellis,
1985).

In addition to the relevance of input and interaction, Swain (1985) defines the
importance of output in the process of acquisition. Through exchanges with peers, or
native speakers of the target language, the learners are not only receiving
meaningful input, but they are also testing the efficiency of their output and the
ability to convey the message. Besides, they are testing their ideas about the
language and creating meaning through negotiation.

Successful second language learning also requires opportunities for students to obtain
ample feedback. Through the teacher’s and peers’ oral feedback, learners can refine
and improve their oral production. Similarly, through error correction, students can
incorporate new language elements from the correct forms of the teacher’s
responses.

02. Provide message ‘redundancy’ (or message ‘abundancy’)

When message ‘redundancy’ occurs, similar ideas are expressed in different ways and
by different means. Rather than simplify the message, try to enrich the linguistic and
extralinguistic context so that the learners get several opportunities to understand
(and, ultimately, learn) the new concepts and language on the basis of multiple cues.
extended discourse.

03. Use demonstrations, modelling, role-playing

Teachers can demonstrate for children with limited proficiency in English how one
makes a polite request, expresses gratitude, apologizes to another person, and so
forth. In this way, the child learns how to use the language for specific purposes.
Role-playing can also help children learn how to use English in specific
circumstances.

04. Use extralinguistic information to make English comprehensible

Use body language (gestures, actions, facial expression), objects, realia, pictures,
models, drawings, and the classroom context to help children understand the
meaning of language.

05. Use paralinguistic information to make English comprehensible

Use paralinguistic features of oral language –intonation, stress, volumen...- to help

children understand the meaning of language.

06. Present new information in the context of known information

Children with limited proficiency in English should receive new information in a

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context that is familiar. This is one reason it is helpful to choose themes and
materials for reading and other activities that are appropriate to the cultural
background and experience of the children. New vocabulary should not be presented
in isolation, but in a context where the child can determine the meaning. It is
especially important that language occurs in the context of the here and now.

07. Paraphrase often

If the child is unable to understand or the teacher wants to expose the children to
rich, varied input, s/he can restate what has been said in simpler words and/or with
more detailed or redundant information (linguistic, paralinguistic and extralinguistic
information).

T: “Emissions, gasses which are sent out into the air, are also a problem”

T: What’s the name of your uncle?

S: (no answer)
T: What’s the name of your mother’s or your father’s brother?

08. Elaborate often

If the child is only capable of using a few words at a time, teachers can repeat what
the child says with more elaboration.

T: What did you do on Saturday?

S: Cinema.
T: Really? Did you go to the cinema? I can’t believe it. What a coincidence! I also
went to the cinema on Saturday. And what film did you watch?

09. Recast (or Reformulate) often

Rather than correcting the child's errors, the teacher should reformulate or rephrase
what the child has said with the correct and appropriate language.

S: Not understand.
T: Oh, you don't understand, Pedro. What is it that you don't understand?

S: I goed to the cinema.

T: You went to the cinema, that’s great.

10. Expand often

By means of expansions, the teacher exposes the learners to rich, correct,

appropriate, related samples of the language:
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11. Use simple structures and avoid too complex structures

In paraphrasing, the tendency is to make constructions more complex grammatically.

When Luis says, "I don't have book," the teacher might say, "It would be nice if
someone were to share their book with Luis." An alternative way of responding would
be to say, "Luis needs to share a book." It is important to keep language a little
beyond the child's own language, but not too far. As the child's language develops,
teachers should gradually increase the complexity of their language. Stories read to
young children beginning to learn English should also have simple constructions-
again, a little beyond what the child is capable of, but not too far beyond their
abilities to understand.

12. Repeat the same sentence patterns and routines

With young children, songs and rhymes are useful in promoting language
development because they repeat sentence patterns. Young children should be
encouraged to share their favourite songs with the class. Teachers can help children
understand if they repeat certain patterns and phrases, such as "Let's get our book
out," so that children can attach meaning to actions.

13. Vary the sentence patterns and routines once the children are ready for it

Once children are able to understand patterns and routines, use a variety of
sentences patterns and linguistic forms -first in conjunction with known patterns and
routines- to express the same linguistic function (for example, once children
understand the instruction “Open the book at page 5”, try using different expressions
such as “Now, I want you to open the book at page 5”, “Now, let's open the open the
book at page 5”.

(en Fleta, 2007: 10)

14. Elicit language from the learners

As it was mentioned before, learners need to use the language in order to learn it;
this means that the teacher should try to get them to speak by asking them
questions, pausing and allowing them time to complete the teacher’s utterance,
using clarification checks and confirmation checks, etc.
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(en Fleta, 2007: 10-11)

S: Metals go in the water.

T: Do you mean that metal sink in the water?

15. Ask open-ended and referential questions

Instead of asking questions with predictable, single right or wrong answer, open-
ended and referential questions stretch children’ curiosity, reasoning ability and
creativity and reproduce natural, everyday language situations (note that referential
questions imply that the answer is not known).

 Tell me about your picture.

 What else can you do with a ball?
 Why do you think this happened?
 What do you think would happen if. . . ?
 Is there another way to . . . 

16. Tailor questions for different levels of language competence and participation

It helps if teachers use "yes/no" questions or alternative questions (“Do you like cats
or dogs?”) with beginning English learners, because these questions are easier than
"what" questions, and "what" questions are easier than "where" or "when" questions.
"How" and "why" questions are the most difficult for new speakers of the language.
Teachers should also provide children with lots of feedback on their responses to
questions so that they learn how to deal with questions appropriately.

17. Respect the child's stages of linguistic development

According to Dunn (1984), the process of second language learning in young children
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within the classroom context goes through three stages, namely: silent period,
intermediate period and breakthrough period. In the silent period, as children can
already communicate in their own language, they want to be able to use the foreign
language in the same way. If they cannot say what they want, they feel frustrated or
lose interest. Thus, to speed up the process of speaking, teachers can provide
children with useful or prefabricated phrases helping to expand the children's
repertoire of language. They can learn these as blocks of sounds the same way they
did when they learnt their first language.

After a certain period of time children move beyond the silent period and begin using
the prefabricated language in different situations. When young foreign language
learners finally begin communication in the target language, that is to say, in the
intermediate period, mainly learnt by imitation and repetition, researchers have
observed two consistent features: the use of telegraphic speech and the use of
formulaic speech.

Telegraphic speech refers to the use of a few content words such as an entire
utterance without function words or morphological markers. Children use these
single words frequently, repeating them and practicing them. Then, the next step in
this process involves an elaboration or extension made by the teacher which the
children imitate. On the other hand, formulaic speech consists of children using short
phrases. Through frequent imitation and repetition such phrases are learnt and used.
These formulas often help children to communicate in the foreign language with
speakers around them.

Finally, in the breakthrough period, children begin to put the learnt language
together to express meaning. It is a process of incorporation. Children incorporate an
utterance used by an adult into an already established phrase or one that is being
produced from elements already learnt. In this way, children begin to recognize the
rules that underlie the foreign language.

However, not all second language learners follow the exact same stages. There is a
set of factors (psychological, sociological, cognitive, to name a few), known as
individual variation, that may affect directly or indirectly the process of second
language learning. Accordingly, some people could learn faster or slower than others,
make more mistakes, etc.

18. Treat code-switching as a normal language phenomenon

In English classes, children seem to scatter Spanish words and phrases throughout
their English speech. Consider this example:

S: “I put the jarrón on the table.”

S: “I want a bike de montaña.”

The goal must always be to communicate with the child. This is why it is a mistake,
in such situations, for teachers to maintain a rigid rule of speaking only one language
at a time or in certain circumstances. Teachers should aim at communicating, even if
that means switching languages. Furthermore, code-switching is a sophisticated
linguistic device that should not be devalued, and could be used to provide the
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children with the appropriate “English version” of their utterance by means of

reformulation.

19. Check for understanding

Effective teachers constantly check for feedback from the child that indicates that
he or she understands what is being said by the teacher or other children. However,
asking “Do you understand?” is not the most effective way of doing it; rather, ask
learners to say in Spanish what they have understood, ask them to act according to
your instructions, etc.

20. Use, provide opportunities for and stimulate extended discourse

Extended discourse refers to multiutterance language that focuses on phenomena

that are not immediately present (for example, personal narratives, stories and
explanations). Providing the learners to extended samples of language give learners
the opportunity to listen (or read) significant amounts of language, and be exposed
to the rhythm, sounds, etc. to the language and to coherent and cohesive texts. Also,
by means of open-ended and referential questions, of follow-up questions and by
increasing ‘wait time’, teachers can give learners the chance to express themselves
in longer stretches of language than the sentence.

21. Think aloud (and get learners to think aloud)

Think aloud to show learners how you carry out and activity, the strategies you use
to understand a text or how you solve a listening comprehension difficulty; and adk
learners to verbalise their thoughts when applying a strategy, when solving a
problem, dealing with the comprehension of a text, etc.

REFERENCES

Dunn, O. (1984). Developing English with Young Learners. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan
Publishers Limited.

Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fleta Guillén, M.T. (2007): The role of interaction in the young learners’ classroom.
Encuentro 14: 6-15.

Swain, M. (1985). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and

comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in
second language acquisition (pp. 235-253). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.