Pedagogical Efficiency of Teacher-led Whole- class Scaffolding as a Pre-writing Task

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) can provide learners with more authentic communicative activities, particularly in foreign language context, where learners may experience few such opportunities. From the perspective of sociocultural theory (SCT), scaffolding is a process of supportive interaction that occurs when learners are communicating with each other. There are situations in which the mediation of the teacher as an expert is necessary in the scaffolding process to advance the learners’ zone of proximal development. The present study sought to extend the scope of TBLT through SCT. More specifically, it was an attempt to investigate the effects of teacher-led whole-class scaffolding as pre-task on the writing proficiency of EFL learners. To this end, fifty Iranian female learners of English at intermediate level of general English proficiency took part in the study which was based on post-test only equivalent groups design. The participants were asked to evaluate some ELT textbooks based on a checklist and write a report respectively. The control group did not receive any pre-task activities; however, the experimental group participated in scaffolding as a pre-task. The results revealed that the trial of pre-task improved the writing performance in such areas as content, organization, grammar, and vocabulary.