Scaffolding Strategies for Enhancing EFL Students’ Cognitive

enhancing EFL students’ cognitive engagement in the two elementary school EFL teachers’ classes. Within the context of this study, the researcher distinguished the types of scaffolding strategies according to teacher’s teaching beliefs toward cognitive engagement. In the present study, according to the two teachers’ beliefs, cognitive engagement was categorized into three categories: 1) triggering and sustaining attention, 2) enhancing memory, and 3) initiating critical thinking. Such finding responds to Vygotsky’s higher order mental process which includes “attention, voluntary memory, rational thought, planning, problem solving, and meaning-making activity” (cited in Lantofl & Thorne, 2006, p 198).

The first category of cognitive engagement, triggering and sustaining students’

attention, referred to the two teachers’ use of scaffolding strategies to focus on alert, direct, or attract the students to pay attention and listen to her in class. The second

category, enhancing memory, referred to the two teachers’ use of scaffolding strategies to increase the students’ familiarity, impressions, and comprehension of phonics, vocabulary, phrases, and sentence patterns in class. The third category, initiating critical thinking, referred to the two teachers’ use of scaffolding strategies to initiate students to think critically in class.

In these two cases, the participants employed different scaffolding strategies.

Table 5 summarizes the two teachers’ scaffolding strategies within three categories of cognitive engagement.

Table 5 Scaffolding Strategies for Enhancing EFL Students’ Cognitive Engagement

Cognitive Engagement Teacher Amy Teacher Emily

Category 1.

practice 2.1.1 Give variety 2.1.1.1 Visual aids

2.3 Provide explanation 2.3.1 Share associated experience

2.4 Provide explanation 2.4.1 Use L1 as a mediated tool

Paying attention was a considerable element for cognitive engagement in Amy’s case.

She used various strategies to trigger and sustain students’ attention. Amy alerted students to pay attention to the class by using the strategies of walk around, stare at students, stop talking, repeat a sentence, call students’ name, and ask what others said before. In addition, she also directed students to notice and listen to her by using slogan and using total physical response (TPR).

Enhancing students’ memory was another important element for cognitive engagement in Amy’s case. For Amy, there were three main purposes to enhance students’ memory. First was to increase students’ familiarity of class materials by providing opportunity to practice. To do so, Amy used the strategies of giving variety with visual aids, using tasks (e.g., information gap), and giving homework. Here, tasks refer to goal-oriented activities in which learners use language to achieve a real outcome (Willis, 1996). Second was to increase students’ impression of class materials by providing explanation. Amy used the strategy of sharing associated experience to enhance students’ impression. Third was to increase students’

comprehension of class materials by providing explanation. To achieve this, Amy used L1 and signs as the mediated tools to explain class materials in class.

At category-three of cognitive engagement, Amy initiated students’ critical thinking by posting questions and providing opportunities for students to use their learning strategies. Learning strategies refer to the steps or operations used by learners to facilitate their acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information (Rubin, 1987).

In class, Amy used the strategies of asking questions (e.g., open questions) and using tasks (e.g., information gap, matching game, categorizing game) to initiate students’

critical thinking.

Compared with Amy, Emily did not take a careful consideration about students’

attention because she used much less strategies here. Emily attracted students to pay

attention to the class by providing awards, using tasks (e.g., code switch, beat the words, make a face), and using nonverbal expressions. Emily focused on alluring students’ attention rather than alerting and directing students.

At category-two, for Emily, there were three main purposes to enhance students’ memory. First, Emily also provided practice opportunities to increase students’ familiarity of class materials. Both of Amy and Emily used the strategies of giving variety with visual aids, giving homework, and using tasks to enhance students’ familiarity class materials. Second, Emily increased students’ impression of class materials by using the strategy of giving variety with visual aids. Third, increasing students’ comprehension of class materials, both of Amy and Emily used the same strategies of using L1 and signs to explain class materials in class. At category-three of cognitive engagement, Emily did not use any strategy to initiate students’ critical thinking.

These two teachers used different types of scaffolding strategies in each category of cognitive engagement shown as table 6.

Table 6 The Types of Scaffolding Strategies in the Two Teacher’s Class Cognitive Engagement Teacher Amy

Type of strategies

Teacher Emily Types of strategies Category 1. Trigger and sustain

attention

2.1 Provide opportunities to practice 3 3

b. Increase Impression

2.2 Provide opportunities to practice 2.3 Provide explanation

Category 3. Initiate critical thinking

3.1 Post Questions 1 0

3.2 Provide opportunities for the use of

learning strategies 1 0

Subtotal 2 0

Total 16 9

According to table 6, Amy used sixteen types of scaffolding strategies in total for enhancing students’ cognitive engagement. There were eight types of strategies at category one; six types of strategies at category two; only two types of strategies at category three. Obviously, Amy used much fewer strategies at category three.

Comparing with Amy, Emily used nine types of strategies in total for enhancing students’ cognitive engagement. For Emily, there were three types of strategies at category-one; six types of strategies at category-two; no strategy at category-three.

The two teachers’ beliefs about using different strategies for enhancing students’ cognitive engagement will be discussed in section 4.3. The types of the two teachers’ scaffolding strategies were classified clearly according to the two tables above. The detailed process of using these strategies will be discussed in the following section.