The Effect Of Teacher And Peer Scaffolding On English Majors' Oral Output In CBI Courses

For the current situation of oral English teaching and learning in China,the students have grasped enough vocabulary and grammar knowledge,but they still find it difficult in expressing themselves and completing communicative activities in English independently.Therefore,the present study takes the Socio-cultural theory as the framework to discover the existing types of both teacher and peer scaffolding in CBI courses,with the aim to investigate the situations of peer scaffolding in various group types and also to explore the different effects of teacher and peer scaffolding on learners? oral output.It is a classroom-based research with a quasi-experimental design,in which the students of the same language proficiency from teacher-student interaction class and peer-peer interaction class are both given group interaction tasks every other week which lasts for 4 months.Altogether,58 English major freshmen with their teacher in two selected classes participate in this study and the students in each class are divided into 7 groups with four or five members.And all the group dialogical communications are recorded and transcribed for further analysis.When transcribing,the author tries to be loyal to the records and also asks her research assistant to check the transcripts in order to make the data sources reliable.The study employs a mixed research method.Research instruments for data collection consist of the oral test and the semi-structured interviews.And the main data source is collected from the recording during group interaction.With the data collected and analyzed through recording transcripts,test results and interview contents,the thesis reveals four major findings about the teacher and peer scaffolding which are closely relevant to the three research questions.(1)There are seven types of teacher and peer scaffolding including providing opinions,providing words and expressions,explaining,correcting false words and expressions,summarizing,demonstrating and giving feedback.(2)High-low achievers group is the optimal group type to provide more peer scaffolding than high-high achievers and low-low achievers group,especially in the peer scaffolding type of providing words and expressions,providing opinions and correcting false words and expressions.(3)Both high-achievers and low-achievers make progress in oral output with teacher scaffolding,but teacher scaffolding brings a better effect on high-achievers? speaking accuracy and complexity.(4)Although both teacher and peer scaffolding have a positive effect on learners? oral output,the teacher scaffolding is more effective than peer scaffolding in improving the learners? oral fluency and accuracy.Besides,the interview also demonstrates that the group interaction activity is welcomed by students,and through teacher and peer scaffolding,students can increase their confidence and enthusiasm to express themselves and are able to improve their speaking ability to accomplish tasks.Both theoretical and pedagogical significance can be found in this research.Theoretically,it has shown that scaffolding types used in group interaction can support students? oral output.Pedagogically,the study addresses the importance of teacher and peer scaffolding to enhance the quality and effectiveness of group interaction in classroom language learning.