A Look at Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (SCT): The Effectiveness of Scaffolding Method on EFL Learners’ Speaking Achievement

Abstract

Speaking is an English ability that learners should acquire. Nevertheless, learners had several speaking difficulties, one of which was a fear of making errors when speaking in English. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of the scaffolding method on enhancing Iranian EFL learners’ speaking achievement. To meet this end, a sample of 61 Iranian EFL learners were chosen from a total of 87 participants based on their Oxford Placement Test’s (OPT, 2007) performance. They were picked out of a private English language school. Their English proficiency was at the intermediate level. The target participants were then randomly divided into two groups: one control group (conventional group) and one experimental group (scaffolding group). Intermediate proficiency level was the primary criterion that had to be met for the learners to be chosen as respondents in this study. Their speaking competence was calculated by speaking section of PET as pretest. This pretest speaking contained different parts like interviews. In the next phase, the treatment was administered. For the scaffolding group, the instructor offered flexible occasions to exercise their skills, knowledge, and learning methods in diverse settings and for different targets. Carrying out the dialogs and designing questions from the texts, making conversations based on the picture and the question cards, were applied as scaffolding techniques. The control group, on the other hand, took part in typical speaking courses using customary methods of instruction. The teacher provided the pupils with a piece of recent news and a video episode of recent events in order to employ authentic language—language as it is used in a real situation. Finally, the two groups’ performances were posttested by PET speaking section. The performance of the two groups was compared, also the results of their pretest and posttest were contrasted. The inferential statistics including independent samples t-test and paired samples t-tests findings showed that there was a substantial difference between the experimental groups and the control group posttests. The results indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group ( $p<0.05$ ) in the speaking posttest, showing that applying scaffolding to experimental group was effective. The study has several educational implications that are highlighted.