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Teacher Scaffolding of Oral Language Production

This research involved two observational studies. It explored the scaffolding processes as part of classroom pedagogy. The research shed light on the way a teacher's instructional methodology took shape in the classroom. The target event for this study was the time in which a novice learner was engaged publically in uttering a sentence in Arabic in response to a task posed by the teacher. The central question was: What does the teacher do to assist and support this interactive sentence production process? It was decided to label this assistance and support as "scaffolding," i.e., temporary support to help a learner accomplish a challenging task slightly beyond his or her current level of proficiency. The research involved detailed descriptions and analysis of videotaped classroom episodes conducted in first-year Arabic language classrooms at a private liberal arts college during a three-month period. A central finding in this study was that oral Arabic sentence production was achieved through several related steps. These steps involved providing the students a pattern to follow, subsequently removing the pattern, and asking the students to produce sentences after explaining the grammatical rules. The teachers differed in the extent to which they launched models and patterns for students to follow.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/145738
Date January 2011
CreatorsGeorge, May
ContributorsDoyle, Walter, Ruiz, Richard, Callahan, Philip
PublisherThe University of Arizona.
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext, Electronic Dissertation
RightsCopyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

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