Analysis Of Teacher’s Scaffolding Talk In English Demonstration Teaching In Junior High School

In the field of second language learning and teaching,researchers have long been interested in exploring how teacher’s talk affects learners’ language performance based on socio-cultural theory,originating from the Soviet developmental psychologist Vygotsky.Recently,from socio-cultural perspective,a lot empirical studies have been conducted to test the effects of teacher’s scaffolding talk on learners’ language performance guided by two major central concepts of socio-cultural theory,namely,“Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD)” and “scaffolding”.Following these two concepts,it was found that teacher’s scaffolding talk,which not only provides necessary and comprehensible language input for the students,but also helps the students go beyond the potential language level,widely exists in the teacher’s talk-in-interaction with students.Therefore,from the socio-cultural perspective,the present study analyzed the current situation of teacher’s scaffolding talk in English demonstration teaching in junior high school by combining quantitative and micro-genetic analysis method.The purpose of the study is two-fold.The prime objective of the study is to explore the types and characteristics of teacher’s scaffolding talk,and the second major aspect is concerned with how teacher’s scaffolding talk activates students’ zone of proximal development.The data of the study is from the videos of the 10 th national English demonstration teaching in junior high school.The relevant episodes were selected and transcribed according to the conventions.In the analysis of data,six possible functions of teacher’s scaffolding talk were categorized.Following this,the present study finds that teacher’s scaffolding talk gives the learners emotional support through the functions such as recruitment(R),direction maintenance(DM)and frustration control(FC);and it also gives the learners cognitive support through the functions such as simplifying the task(S),marking critical features(MCF),and demonstration(D).Meanwhile,the study reveals that demonstration(D)might be the most critical function of scaffolding in the instructional dialogues followed by marking critical features(MCF),direction maintenance(DM),simplifying the task(S),frustration control(FC),and recruitment(R).