چكيده لاتين :
The present s tudy was designed following a scaffolding principle
of sociocultural theory (Wood, Bruner & Ross, 1976) with an
attempt to inves tigate the role of the four scaffolding techniques,
namely Hard, Soft (Saye & Brush, 2002), Reciprocal (Holton &
Clarke, 2006), and Virtual (Yelland & Mas ters, 2007) in developing
reading s trategy of Iranian EFL learners. To accomplish the project,
80 homogeneous intermediate level male and female EFL learners
were chosen. The learners in all groups received a survey of reading
s trategies (Sheorey & Mokhtari, 2002), their respective intervention,
and the survey of reading s trategies as a pos ttes t. Likewise,
in the qualitative section of the s tudy, the learners’ self-reports as
well as the teacher’s observations were used to collect the data. The
collected data were analyzed through employing one-way ANOVA
and MANOVA to compare the mean scores of the four experimental
groups on the pos ttes t reading s trategies. The qualitative data pertained
to the learners’ reports and teacher’s classroom observations
were analyzed using open and axial coding methods. In terms of
reading s trategies, the results revealed that not only traditional and
virtual scaffolding treatments had different effects on the development
of global, problem solving, and supporting reading s trategies
among Iranian EFL learners, the hard scaffolding group (as a traditional
scaffolding group) had the highes t use of reading s trategies
followed by the virtual scaffolding group. Nevertheless, reciprocal
and soft scaffolding groups (following other traditional forms of scaffolding)
similarly had less use of reading s trategies. Findings of this
s tudy extended earlier unders tandings of scaffolding in an EFL environment and could contribute to the advancement of future courses
in terms of their scaffolding pedagogical aspects.
Background of the S tudy: Reading comprehension is the mos t significant
source of information access in an EFL situation (Crys tal,
1999). The mas tery of reading skill in English, besides other skills,
is a priority for many language learners in the EFL contexts (Hedgcock
& Ferris, 2009; Richards, 2008). On the other hand, from a
sociocultural perspective, learning and development are s tudied
within the social and cultural context. Vygotsky believed that “human
learning cannot be unders tood independently from the social
and cultural forces that influence individuals” (Barnard & Campbell,
2005, p. 76). According to this perspective, in order to learn
and regulate their mental activities, individuals use different tools
and one of these tools which supports the assis tance which is provided
by others for a novice is scaffolding. Reading comprehension
and scaffolding could be accounted as the mos t significant s trategies
and policies that are required to achieve not only unders tanding of
the context and environment (Ohta, 2000) but also evaluating the
processes and activities involved in doing and learning (Hedgcock
& Ferris, 2009). Therefore, regarding the importance of developing
second language reading s trategies, the main goal of the current
research is to inves tigate new ways of teaching reading by focusing
on both traditional (soft, hard, and reciprocal) and virtual scaffolding
types. The primary focus of this s tudy is to determine whether
employing different types of scaffolding differently affect reading
s trategy development among Iranian EFL learners. It seems that
scaffolding types and their contribution to reading skill have been
inves tigated in previous s tudies. However, to the bes t knowledge of
the present authors, no s tudies thus far have inves tigated the mixed
effect of scaffolding types and reading skill along with a focus on
reading s trategy development. Therefore, the present s tudy is an attempt
to bridge this gap in EFL context of Iran.
Methodology: The participants of the s tudy were 80 non-randomly
selected intermediate level s tudents with the age range 19 to 25
in the Islamic Azad University of Bandar Abbas. The data for the
present s tudy were collected by means of a Preliminary English t (PET), a reading s trategy ques tionnaire, and learners’ self-reports
as well as the teacher’s observations. To homogenize s tudents
at intermediate level, a copy of the piloted PET which checked the
skills of lis tening, speaking and reading and writing was used. The
collected data were analyzed through employing one-way ANOVA
and MANOVA to compare the mean scores of the four experimental
groups on the pos ttes t reading s trategies. The qualitative data pertained
to the learners’ reports and teacher’s classroom observations
were analyzed using open and axial coding methods.
Discussion and Conclusion: The findings revealed that not only traditional
and virtual scaffolding treatments had different effects on
the development of global, problem solving, and supporting reading
s trategies among Iranian EFL learners, the hard scaffolding group
(as a traditional scaffolding group) had the highes t use of reading
s trategies followed by the virtual scaffolding group. Nevertheless,
reciprocal and soft scaffolding groups (following other traditional
forms of scaffolding) similarly had less use of reading s trategies.
The present findings on the ground of the success and priority of
hard and virtual scaffolding in developing and making use of global,
problem solving, and supporting reading s trategies can take support
from a lot of previous s tudies in the SLA research (Afflerbach
& Cho, 2010; Anderson, 2019; Tsai et al., 2010; Deshpande, 2016;
Kargar, 2013; Ruiz de Zarobe & Zenotz, 2018). In this regard, reciprocal
scaffolding was also found to have proved successful for the
low-achieving learners in terms of s trategy development which is in
line with some other s tudies including Van Keer and Vanderlinde’s
(2010) s tudy on the impact of cross-age peer tutoring on L2 reading
comprehension and reading s trategy use of EFL learners, Boardman
et al.’s (2018) s tudy on s trategy ins truction shifts of teacher and
s tudent interactions during text‐based discussions, Okkinga et al.’s
(2018) on the effects of reciprocal teaching on the development of
reading comprehension among EFL learners, and Oczkus’s (2018)
which found that reciprocal teaching could offer powerful s trategies
and lessons for improving reading comprehension of low-achieving
learners. The present s tudy demons trated that providing EFL learners
with hard, reciprocal, virtual, and soft scaffolding can significantly
improve their performance in L2 reading and enhance their ability in using reading s trategies, though the hard and virtual scaffolding
which relied on technologies enjoyed a higher rank in this
regard. EFL learners need to know native like vocabularies, grammatical
points, and preferences, dictions, and the like for a native
like performance.
