The Role Of Scaffolding In Corrective Feedback In University English Writing Consultations

Over the last few decades,researchers have done extensive studies on both scaffolding and the effect of various forms of feedback on EFL writing revision.But not enough attention has been paid to in what way scaffolding affects corrective feedback in China’s university EFL writing.In order to investigate this,the longitudinal case study draws on Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory(1978)and follows the scaffolding mechanisms like marking critical features,simplifying the task,goal-orientation,and modeling.The data was collected by recording the classroom discourse between a tutor and five English major freshmen during their eight-week EFL writing tutorial,tutorial journals as well as interviews on scaffolding and corrective feedback.Besides,all the five students’ writing drafts and revisions were analyzed.Data analyses reveal that negotiation between tutor and tutees facilitates corrective feedback,which produces more remarkable progress in writing accuracy.It is also observed that the level of intake among students is higher when the tasks are simplified,when relevant models are provided.But scaffolding in either explicit or implicit way largely depends on the language proficiency of the learner and the type of problem in question.Besides eliciting questions in scaffolding can encourage learners to think more on the discursive level of their works in the writing process.These findings suggest that corrective feedback can be more effective when scaffolding is carried out between EFL learners and tutors through negotiation and discussion.The study has some implications for writing tutorials and teaching.Firstly,both scaffolding and corrective feedback should be incorporated in EFL writing pedagogy as a method to improve EFL learners’ writing quality and ability.Secondly,teachers can apply the method of simplifying the task,modeling and asking eliciting questions more frequently in EFL writing consultations,so that students’ uptake of the corrective feedback can be deeper.Lastly,the better teachers understand the learners’language proficiency,the more effective role scaffolding will play in reinforcing students’ uptake of the corrective feedback.