Scaffolding

Literature review confirms that TBCOA and ST were effective in improving EFL learners’ writing skills. However, a new study is necessary to compare the rate of effectiveness of these activities and techniques on Iranian intermediate L2 learners' writing performance. Moreover, the impact of two types of TBCOA versus two types of ST on intermediate EFL learners' writing performance was compared. This research followed a quasi-experimental design. A sample of 80 intermediate-level EFL learners, selected through convenience sampling from a private language school, constituted the participants. The learners were divided into four groups. The homogeneity of the participants in terms of writing performance was checked through a quick placement test at the outset of the study. Furthermore, the effects of debating vs. dictogloss., teacher scaffolding vs. peer scaffolding, and overall TBCOA vs. overall ST were compared through ANCOVA, with the pretest scores treated as the covariate. Debating outperformed dictogloss, teacher scaffolding was more effective than peer, and the overall TBCOA group significantly performed better than the general ST group in writing performance. The learners' interview results concerning the role of TBCOA and ST in their writing production resulted in several common themes, which were categorized into 16 codes for debating, 11 codes for dictogloss, six common codes for teacher scaffolding and peer scaffolding. This study provides implications for EFL writing instruction.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of scaffolding genre knowledge and metacognitive strategy use on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ academic writing skills. The initial population was 100 EFL students from M.A. English language teaching (ELT) students who took academic writing course at Islamic Azad University, Tehran and Alborz branches. To homogenize the sample, Oxford placement test (OPT) was administered, and based on its results, 75 advanced learners were selected for the purpose of the study. After that, they were divided into 3 groups, namely the experimental group A (scaffolding genre knowledge), the experimental group B (metacognitive strategy use), and the control group. IELTS academic writing task 2 was administered as the pretest and posttest. The treatments lasted for 16 sessions. To explore the learners’ perceptions regarding the instructions qualitatively, the semi-structured individual interviews were administered to 20 students who were chosen from the experimental groups. The results showed that scaffolding genre knowledge and metacognitive strategy use had significant impacts on the Iranian EFL learners’ academic writing skill. In addition, the findings indicated that there was a significant difference between the effects of scaffolding genre knowledge and metacognitive strategy use on the Iranian EFL academic writing skill in which scaffolding genre knowledge had more significant effects on Iranian EFL academic writing skill than metacognitive strategy use. Furthermore, the qualitative findings showed that the learners adopted positive views towards scaffolding genre knowledge and metacognitive strategy use in developing their academic writing skill.

This research sought to investigate IELTS test-takers' perceptions of obtaining scaffolded MOOC-based training. To accomplish this purpose, 50 IELTS candidates were chosen through convenient sampling and assigned to one of two groups: a MOOC-based teaching group (MG, n = 25) and a face-to-face instruction group (F2FG, n = 25). The MG test-takers were exposed to FutureLearn, while the F2FG test-takers were given identical materials in person. Scaffolding took the form of visual aids, pre-teaching the necessary terminology, drawing on the participants' past knowledge of a subject, modeling what they were requested to write, and providing them with the sentence patterns needed to complete the IELTS Writing Task 2. The writing pre-test and post-test scores of the two groups were examined using a one-way ANCOVA, which revealed that the MG learners outperformed their F2FG counterparts significantly. The perception questionnaire results revealed that MG students liked MOOC-based education for their writing courses. The implications and applications of the current study's results are provided at the end of the research

The current study examined the effect of scaffolding through presenting examples and pictures on EFL learners’ vocabulary learning and retention.For this purpose, six research niquestions were posed and a quasi- experimental design was applied with two groups of learners who were selected as experimental groups. This research was carried out with a sample of 60 English students from Iran Zaban Institution. The data were collected using three instruments. Primarily, a standard test of Nelson which had 50 items was used to assess general proficiency of the learners for the purpose of their homogeneity. Then, in order to investigate the learner’s lexical knowledge before executing the scaffolding strategies used by examples and pictures, the researcher prepared a vocabulary test used as pretest. At the end of the treatment the students’ lexical knowledge was assessed by a posttest. Also a vocabulary test was used in order to measure their vocabulary retention after two weeks. The results indicated that employing examples helps vocabulary learning as well as retention. In addition, it was shown that using pictures helps both vocabulary learning and retention, and employing examples and pictures have almost the same effect on vocabulary learning. Finally, the results are discussed and compared with the previous ones, implications are explained, and some suggestions and recommendations are provided.

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) modes can ease scaffolding through multimodality in collaborative writing tasks. However, there is an ongoing debate regarding synchronous and asynchronous CMC environments. Additionally, there are conflicting results regarding gender’s pedagogical beliefs in CMC applications. The current study aimed to explore if there is a difference between synchronous and asynchronous multimodal scaffolding on the freewriting complexity of EFL learners. Besides, genders’ perceptions about applying multimodal scaffolding were compared. Participants were 84 EFL learners who randomly assigned into three groups. For the pre-test, a picture, podcast, and movie were shared, and the participants were asked to complete their freewriting tasks individually within the allocated time. For treatment, one experimental group was scaffolded in a synchronous environment by sending messages on WhatsApp, and the other experimental group experienced asynchronous scaffolding via email. The results indicated that multimodal scaffolding is beneficial. However, no significant difference was found between the writing complexity of synchronous and asynchronous groups. Furthermore, a significant difference between males’ and females’ tendency to use multimodal scaffolding was uncovered. The findings highlighted the role synchronous and asynchronous multimodal scaffolding can play in collaborative writing tasks