Using Scaffolded Instructions to Improve Students’ Skills
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Abstract
This study aims to investigate whether using scaffolded instructions can enhance students’ speaking skills and build up their confidence. The participants were twelve first-year undergraduate students who attended a self-study club called “Let’s Speak”. The objective of the club is to enable students to make effective presentations and speak English with confidence. Throughout the 10 sessions, students spent each two-week time in length practising making presentation about five different things. Language support and feedback both from teacher and friends were used as scaffolds to enhance students’ performance each
week. Confidence in speaking questionnaire (adapted from Griffee, 1997) were distributed to the participants twice (before session 1 and after session 10) to see changes in their perceived confidence while the checklist and presentation scores of the first session and the last session were compared to see changes in their overall performance. At the end of the tenth session, videos of the students’ performance in session 1 and session 10 were shown to the students as a prompt for a stimulated-recall interview on how they saw their improvement. The findings reveal an increase in their perceived confidence as well as higher scores in their actual performance. The students themselves reported their improvements in many aspects. On the basis of these findings, the pedagogical implications and suggestions are included in this paper.
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