American Journal Of Philological Sciences
85
https://theusajournals.com/index.php/ajps
VOLUME
Vol.05 Issue04 2025
PAGE NO.
85-89
10.37547/ajps/Volume05Issue04-21
The Implementation of Scaffolding Techniques
Worldwide to Improve English Reading Proficiency In
TEFL
Kalmuratova Juldiz Rustemovna
English language teacher of secondary school №2 in Kegeyli district, Uzbekistan
Received:
16 February 2025;
Accepted:
17 March 2025;
Published:
16 April 2025
Abstract:
This article aims to provide a general understanding of the term scaffolding, emphasizing its significance
in education and its role in enhancing reading comprehension. A central objective of this study is to explore the
experiences of international educators and scholars in applying scaffolding strategies to develop reading skills
within the context of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). To achieve this, the study reviews two
scholarly articles from Jambi University in Indonesia and Islamic Azad University in Iran. In both institutions,
professional educators and linguists conducted experiments on the application of scaffolding techniques to
improve reading comprehension in TEFL settings. These studies focused on strengthening students’ reading
abilities through scaffolding and reported their findings based on rigorous scientific research. Both of them tried
to enhance their students’ reading by using scaffolding strategy and gave the detailed report on their scientific
work and paid attention to its effectiveness during the experiment. While learning these scientific works we have
strived to examine them thoroughly and introduce them to our learners as well.
Keywords:
Scaffolding, reading comprehension skill, TEFL, control group, experimental group, effectiveness of
using scaffolding.
Introduction:
Termonologization of the concept of
scaffolding in education
Scaffolding is a construction and refers to the
temporary platform that is set up for builders to stand
on while they put up new buildings, walls, bridges and
other man-made structures. This construction is also
used when builders repair the buildings and to reach
the heights and other areas that are difficult to get to.
Etymologically, the word “scaffold” was derived from
old French “eschafaut”, in modern French “echafaud”
probably altered (by influence of eschase “a prop”,
“support”) from chaffaut, from Vulgar Latin
“catafalcum”. The word catafalque means a decorated
platform on which the dead div of a famous person is
placed before a funeral. The meaning of this word is
also somehow connected with a supporting platform in
spite of the fact that, it is not an iridescent word to
hear. For as long as humans have been building
structures, they have used scaffolding. The use of
scaffolding dates back to prehistoric times
–
17000
years ago. Paleolithic caves were painted with the
assistance of scaffolding, and the ancient Egyptians
used wooden scaffolding to construct their impressive
pyramids.
In education and teaching, scaffolding theory was first
introduced in 1958 by the American cognitive
psychologist Jerome Seymour Bruner. He used the term
to describe young children’s oral language acquisition.
According to Bruner children helped by their parents
when first begin learning.
In this Bruner’s instructional scaffolding a teacher
provides sufficient support to promote learning when
concepts and skills are being first introduced to
students. These supports may include resource,
compelling task, templates and guides on the
development of cognitive and social skills. Instructional
scaffolding could be used through modeling a task,
giving advice or providing coaching. These supports are
gradually decreased as students develop independent
American Journal Of Philological Sciences
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American Journal Of Philological Sciences (ISSN
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learning strategies, skills and knowledge [5]. Teachers
help the students master a task or a concept by
providing support. The support can take a great deal of
forms, such as outlines, recommended documents,
storyboards, or key questions.
Pedagogical experience of applying scaffolding in
teaching foreign languages
The concept of proximal development (ZPD) was
developed by Lev Semenovich Vygotsky during the late
1920 and elaborated progressively until his death in
1934, which came to the central part of his
“scaffolding” theory. According to Lev Vygotsky,
language is the way that a child communicates with
others after they are born and they continue to learn
by interacting with those around them [8]. Building on
his idea of social interaction as the bases for learning,
he broached the value of a mentor or teacher in the life
of a student. Scaffolding works to maintain the child’s
potential level of development in the zone proximal
development (ZPD). An essential element to the ZPD
and scaffolding is the acquisition of language.
According to Vygotsky, language (and in particular,
speech) is fundamental to children’s cognitive growth
because language provides purpose and intentions so
that behaviors can be better understood. Through the
use of speech, children are able to communicate to and
learn from others through dialogue, which is an
essential tool in the ZPD. A construct that is critical for
scaffolding instruction is Vygotsky’s concept of the
zone of proximal development (ZPD). The zone of
proximal development is the field between what a
learner can do on their own (expert stage) and the most
that can be achieved with the support of a
knowledgeable peer or instructor (pedagogical stage)
[8]. Vygotsky was convinced that a child could be taught
any subject efficiently using scaffolding practices by
implementing the scaffolds through the zone of
proximal development. Students are escorted and
monitored through learning activities that function as
conducts to get them to the next stage. Thus the
learner obtains new understandings by building on
their prior knowledge through the support delivered by
more capable individuals. Several peer-reviewed
studies have shown that when there is a deficiency in
guided learning experiences and social interaction,
learning and development are obstructed [5].
Moreover, several things influence the ZPD of students,
ranging from the collaboration of peers to technology
available in the classroom.
Vygotsky said, “what the child is able to do in
collaboration today he will be able to do independently
tomorrow”.
There are three essential features of scaffolding that
facilitate learning:
1.
The first feature is the interaction between the
learner and the expert. The interaction should be
collaborative for it to be effective.
2.
The second is that learning should take place in
the learner’s zone of proximal development. To do that
the expert needs to be aware of the lea
rner’s current
level of knowledge and then work to a certain extent
beyond that level.
3.
The third feature of scaffolding is that the
scaffold, the support and guidance provided by the
expert, is gradually removed as the learner becomes
more proficient.
The support and guidance provided to the learner are
almost similar to the scaffolds in building construction
where the scaffolds provide both “adjustable and
temporal” support to the building under construction
[8]. The support and guidance provided to learners
facilitate internalization of the knowledge needed to
complete the task. This support is taken away little by
little until the learner is independent [2].
In order to make scaffolding effective teachers should
pay attention to the following:
1.
The selection of the learning task: The task
should ensure that learners use the developing skills
that need to be mastered. The task should also be
engaging and interesting to keep learners involved. This
task should be neither too difficult not too easy for the
learner.
2.
The anticipation of errors: After choosing the
task, the teacher needs to anticipate errors the learners
are likely to commit when working on the task.
Anticipation of errors enables the scaffolder to
properly guide the learners away from ineffective
directions.
3.
The application of scaffolds during the learning
task: Scaffolds could be organized in “simple skill
acquisition or they may be dynamic and generative”.
Here, the teacher should choose the scaffolds
according to the topic of the lesson. If the lesson is
complicated, he cannot choose simple tasks and vice
versa [6].
4.
The consideration of emotional issues:
Scaffolding is not limited to a cognitive skill and can also
support emotional responses. For example, during a
task the scaffolder (expert) might need to manage and
control for frustration and loss of interest that could be
experienced by the learner. Encouragement is an
important scaffolding component as well [1].
While analyzing international experiences of using
scaffolding str
ategy in enhancing students’ reading
skill, it was obviously seen that the experts had taken
American Journal Of Philological Sciences
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American Journal Of Philological Sciences (ISSN
–
2771-2273)
into account all this information about the
effectiveness of scaffolding. From their experiments
with students, we can assume that they had learned all
the features and ways for making scaffolding strategy
effective in developing students’ reading skills. As this
article is mainly focuses on using scaffolding in
improving
reading
skill
in
English
classes,
correspondingly, our main focus was also using
scaffolding strategy in improving reading skill in TEFL.
As English is the world’s second language and reading
plays a major role in learning it, then everyone
understands its importance of investigating the ways of
making this process effective and simple.
The first research work which was analyzed is the
experiment done by the Doctor of Applied Linguistics
Sri Wachyunni from Jambi University in Jambi city,
Indonesia. The title of his article is “The effectiveness of
scaffolding strategy in EFL reading comprehension”.
This experiment was made in 2015 among the 60
students of English Education at Jambi University. The
students in the experimental and the control group
read the same English texts. In the experimental group,
students were helped by scaffolding questions in
cooperative learning condition. In the control group,
students had no scaffolding questions in conventional
learning condition. The students were given a pre-test
and post-test in order to measure their comprehension
before and after reading classes in both groups.
Statistical analyses using an independent sample t-test
were conducted to compare mean scores of scaffolding
reading class as the experimental group and non-
scaffolding class as the control group. The results
revealed that scaffolding provides a differential effect
on reading comprehension gain for the lower and
higher ability students in the experimental group [3].
This suggests that the lower students of scaffolding
group benefited more in terms of reading
comprehension gain than the higher ability students.
In the Introduction part of the article there is a plain
and clear explanation of the importance of reading in
learning English: Reading skills in English as a foreign
language context are important for students at a
university level because almost all of academic
activities in this environment require reading skills. For
students of English program study or English education,
the importance of those skills becomes more obvious.
Reading skills to comprehend or summarize book
chapters, report, journals, and various genres of texts
which are written in English need to be grasped by all
of the students to complete their tasks. In this sense
students’ ability in texts comprehension is the key
success for academic achievement [9]. The participants
of this experiment are 60 undergraduate students of
English Education, at the faculty of Teacher Training
and Education, Jambi State University in Indonesia.
They are mostly native speakers of various local
languages with numerous dialects, such as dialects of
Kerinci, Palembang, Riau, Bengkulu, and Jambi Malay,
whereas Indonesian language (bahasa Indonesia)
commonly is used as their second language in a limited
context. English is used as the language of instruction
in the classroom. Yet, Indonesian will be used when
they fail to understand utterances or sentences in
English. The materials and the scaffolding worksheet
which were given to the students were prepared
properly and checked beforehand by the experts. Test
instrument and procedures were done professionally
as well. To analyze the data, an independent sample t-
test was conducted to examine the differences in
reading comprehension gain between experimental
and control groups. The gain score in reading was
calculated by post-test minus pre-test scores. The
independent variables were scaffolding cooperative
learning and non-scaffolding learning condition. The
dependent variable was reading comprehension gain.
After analyzing all the results, discussions of this
experiment the author Sri Wachyunni concluded that
his article supports many findings in practicing
scaffolding as an effective strategy in reading
comprehension in an EFL context [9]. The scaffolding
used by the teacher in cooperative learning condition
provides the substantial effect in enhancing students’
skill in reading comprehension as indicated from the
gain. Specifically, as far as levels of ability in reading
comprehension are concerned, scaffolding is quite
helpful for low ability students to achieve better
comprehension. This suggests that the low ability take
more advantages from reading through scaffolding
questions as it was experimented in this study. As a
result, they achieve more gain than the high ability
students. To end, as scaffolding revealed the
effectiveness in enhancing students’ skills in rea
ding
comprehension it is reasonable to suggest teachers
implement this strategy in an EFL reading classroom.
Possibilities of scaffolding strategy in developing
English reading skill
The second research work which was analyzed is the
article by the part time tutor Mohammad Amin Bassiri
at Islamic Azad University, Iran. It was published in the
British Journal of Social Sciences in October 2012. The
topic of the article is “The impact of scaffolding as a
strategy for teaching reading on the motivation of
Iranian L2 learners”. The article is about a number of
second language (L2) studies indicated the positive
impacts of scaffolding as a technique for teaching
reading. Their study has three purposes: firstly, to
examine the impact of scaffolding on reading
comprehension in Iranian L2 classroom context and
American Journal Of Philological Sciences
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American Journal Of Philological Sciences (ISSN
–
2771-2273)
secondly to investigate the possible effects
implementing this technique on the motivation and
attitude of learners. The last purpose is to investigate
the possible impact of gender as a moderator variable
between scaffolding and reading development [3]. The
results of the study supported the initial predictions
that scaffolding has a positive effect
on learners’
reading comprehension and motivation scores. The
findings also point to a positive relationship between
female learners’ achievements in comparison with
males in term of their reading and motivation.
The participants of this study were 34 intermediate
learners of English affiliated to an English language
institute in Iran. They were both male and female. They
were chosen on the basis of their performance on a
pre-test administrated among the intermediate level
learners. Then, they were randomly divided into two
groups of scaffolding and non-scaffolding. They
received one semester of instruction (17 sessions). At
the end of each session their reading comprehension
were tested by quizzes whose average score were later
used for the assessment of each student’s overall
performance. The materials for the current study
include placement test, source book (i.e., Facts and
Figures), the test for post-
test and Gardner’s (1996)
attitude motivation battery test. This test was only
administered at the end of the semester. Finally,
multivariate ANOVA (analysis of variance, Ronald
Fisher, 1918), as the statistical procedure, was used for
examining the effectiveness of the treatment on
reading comprehension and motivation of the learners.
This was done using the SPSS (Statistical Package for
the social sciences) (version 16) software.
The first aim of the current study was to examine the
positive
impact
of
scaffolding
on
reading
comprehension in Iranian L2 classroom context and
secondly to examine the probable effects of scaffolding
on learners' motivation and thirdly to investigate the
possible impact of gender as a moderator variable
between scaffolding and reading development. So a
multivariate analysis of variance was conducted to
examine the effect of scaffolding on learners'
motivation, reading comprehension and the possible
impact of gender and interaction between them.
The results of the study supported the initial
predictions that scaffolding has a positive effect on
learners' reading comprehension scores. These findings
are in line with the previous studies, confirming the
claim that scaffolding can promote internal individual
learner variables like motivation and in this it can lead
to learners' full engagement [3]. This fact may be due
to their active participation during the research in
comparison with males who seemed somehow
reluctant about the results of this new way of teaching.
The main implication of the current study for
practitioners and language teachers is that it may be an
answer for the question of engagement of language
learners within classroom. Language learners may have
many backgrounds and many problems in their
personal life which might prevent them of becoming
fully engaged in the teaching and learning process, so
language teachers must try to find innovative ways to
promote learners’ involvement and engagement in the
classroom.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, this article informs several features of using
scaffolding strategy in teaching foreign language
mainly focusing on reading. As reading is one of the
essential beginning part of a teaching and learning
process, and receptive skill as well. If we say particularly
about the teaching foreign languages process, then it
can be observed with certainty that like any other
subjects using scaffolding strategy in teaching foreign
languages has significant chances for being successful.
As during the teaching foreign languages process
students need support and help by their teachers at the
initial steps. They are able to learn much more
effectively with their teachers until they become
proficient or independent learners. They complete
their tasks and obtain new knowledge from their
teachers. As the definition of scaffolding strategy is to
provide support in the period of gaining new
knowledge, then its importance in teaching foreign
languages is seen evidently. If to say about the
limitations of scaffolding strategy in teaching foreign
languages, then it may become habitual for some
students to wait
for the teacher’s support all time. This
may happen because some psychological feature of
students or variety of unknown factors which are not
always may be noticed by the teacher. Some students
may tend to rely on teachers’ support for a long term
perspective, while some of the students may become
independent faster. In such cases, it may cause
problems
in
finding
golden
mean.
As it is seen from the research works which were done
by Iranian and Indonesian teachers, it can be assumed
that scaffolding strategy is shown its effectiveness
during their experiments. So, it can be concluded that
scaffolding is one of the useful and effective strategies
in teaching foreign languages and in improving reading
comprehension
in
EFL
as
well.
Lastly, as scaffolding is indicated its effectiveness in
teaching foreign languages and reading comprehension
skill it is reasonable to propose teachers implement this
strategy in their teaching process as well.
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