SCAFFOLDING IN TEACHING WRITING
NEWS ITEM TEXT, ITS BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES
Mayang Sari Nirmala Dewi
English Education Department, Faculty of Language and Literature, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
Rahma Sakina (Corresponding author)
English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Ma’seom, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
Eva Meidi Kulsum
English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Ma’seom, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
Aip Syaepul Uyun
English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Ma’seom, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
Riyadh Ahsanul Arifin
English Education Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Masoem University, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]
APA Citation: Dewi, M. S. N., Sakina, R., Kulsum, E. M., Uyun, A. S., & Arifin, R. A. (2023). Scaffolding provided by a teacher in teaching writing news item texts. English Review: Journal of English Education, 11(1), 63-74. https://doi.org/10.25134/erjee.v11i1.6563
Received: 19-10-2022 Accepted: 27-12-2022 Published: 28-02-2023
INTRODUCTION
Writing is an important skill to be acquired and also is considered the most difficult language skill to be mastered. In the context of language teaching, this skill has become a requirement for success (Mustafa et al., 2020). However, writing is considered to be one of challenging skills encountered by students (AlMarwani, 2020).
In term of linguistic skills involved, its production process includes generating ideas, organizing, drafting, revising, and editing (Khatter, 2019) of which components include structure, vocabulary, content, organization, and mechanics (Ampa and Quraisy, 2018).
The scaffolding metaphor was applied to interactions between teachers and students and Abstract: This research aims to investigate types of scaffolding, the ways a teacher provides scaffolding, and benefits and challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text. The participants involved in this research are an English teacher and 27 students of tenth grade in a senior high school in Bandung. This research employed a qualitative research design, embracing characteristic of a case study. The data were obtained from classroom observation for six meetings, and one interview. The data collected from classroom observation and interview were transcribed and then analyzed by using framework of types of scaffolding (e.g Roehler and Cantlon (1997), Hammond (2001), Gibbons, (2002), and Walqui (2006)). The findings showed that seven types of scaffolding were provided by the teacher during teaching writing News Item text. The most frequent scaffolding was given in the Modeling stage, while scaffolding was removed in the Independent Writing stage. Regarding the benefits and challenges of providing scaffolding, this research found out the benefits of scaffolding such as to connect students’ prior knowledge with a new concept, to engage students, to minimize the level confusion of students, and to build students’ self- confidence. Meanwhile, the challenges of providing scaffolding are the number of students in the classroom, time constraints, and demands on teacher.
Keywords: benefits; challenges; scaffolding; news item text; teaching writing.
parents-child in the 1980s and late 1970s (Sarmiento-Campos et al., 2022). When this metaphor is used in educational settings, it means the mediation teachers or instructors make within a students’ zone of proximal development (ZPD) to support, guide their learning and to advance their existing abilities (Sylvia et al., 2022). This assistance is maximized to develop their abilities, directing the less competent student to become more skilled, independent, and autonomous (Omoniyi & Torru, 2018; Ikawati, 2020; Lhadon
& Wangmo, 2022; Narina, 2022; Tabib, 2022).
This metaphor deals with teachers’ role as a key driver for successful learning (Alrawili et al., 2022), more knowledgeable peers (Babu et al., 2022) in guiding their students during learning activity in order to maximize students’ zone of proximal development (ZPD). Thus, scaffolding simply refers to a powerful instructional tool to help learners extend their level of understanding and accomplish any given tasks independently (Agu & Iyamu, 2020; Piamsai, 2020; Yildiz &
Celik, 2020). Scaffolding is used to verify students' understanding, offer academic standards, clarify the broader view of the teaching/learning process, and call students' attention to prior and upcoming topics, lessons, and evaluations (Heron
& Webster, 2019). This instruction provides contextual support through simplified language showing visual and graphics, clues, and giving hand on learning experiences (Ovando & Combs, cited in Mohani et al., 2020).
In educational setting, there are several types of scaffolding based on some experts. The principles of types of scaffolding adopted in this research are synthesized from other related theories that include bridging, contextualizing, inviting students’ participation, schema building, offering explanation, modeling, and verifying and clarifying students’ understanding.
Bridging refers to creating a connection between new materials they just learn and concepts that they have already learned (Khatib &
Chalak, 2022). Thus, it is an anticipatory guide that can assist students to predict or retell the concepts which contribute to a better understanding by activating their prior knowledge (Tajeddin et al., 2020; Lukmawardani, 2022).
There are two ways to implement this type of scaffolding in the classroom, such as stimulating students to sharing their experience, and also using pictures to see connection between what the students have already known and what the students is possible to know.
Contextualization refers to introducing
language in meaningful contexts and with authentic objects (Masangcai, 2022; Yong, 2022).
In this type of scaffolding, the teacher can make analogies based on student experience. Using the language used in daily life. Thus it will help students to understand what is being taught easily (Lukmawardani, 2022).
Inviting students participant is an activity that is carried out after the teacher provide illustrations of some thoughts, feelings, or actions, students given the opportunity to participate in process that occurs (Lukmawardani, 2022). Pazos et al. (2019) argue that participation is crucial scaffolding. The difference relies on the way to achieve the purpose. In bridging, it is in line with establishing students’ prior knowledge to subject matter, meanwhile, in inviting students’ participation, it is relevant to students’ participation only.
According to Lukmawardani (2022), schema building relates to students' general knowledge that can guide them to a detailed understanding.
In this context, students will be able to use the information they know to foster an understanding of new concepts. Bar et al. (2022) argue that in schema building, teachers help learners to recall the previous knowledge, build on it and connect it to new one for instance focusing on subhead lines, charts, titles and numbers.
To implement this type of scaffolding, asking the students to preview a text, noting heads and subheads, illustrations and their captions, titles of charts before reading are various activities can be conducted by a teacher in the context of teaching language. In addition, schema is important before reading because it is the process of storing and retrieving knowledge and experience, organizing students’ knowledge and understanding and attracting their attention to important points, topics, and information by focusing on heads and subheads, pictures and their captions, class agendas, and titles of charts (Mahan et al., 2018).
Offering explanation is a type of scaffolding which refers to The teacher offering an explanation that refers to explicit statement and adapted to students in order to emerge an understanding of what is being studied (declarative or prepositional knowledge), why and when used (conditional or situational knowledge), and how used (procedural knowledge) (Lukmawardani, 2022).
To apply this type of scaffolding in the learning process, declarative knowledge can be identified when teacher explains or re-explains the characteristics of a certain text under discussion. Meanwhile, conditional knowledge
can be found when the teacher informs the reason why the text is important for students and when the students can use it in daily life.
Modeling refers to directly showing students what to do in the activities or tasks (Yong, 2022).
In modeling, pupils are given representations of what is required of them, providing them with explicit guidelines (Sarmiento-Campos et al., 2022). With modeling, the teacher engages students by showing them how to perform a skill while describing each step with a rationale (Idoghor & Kasumu, 2022). Simply stated, modeling is used as a strategy to afford students’
involvement with good examples of the final product (Sari & Munir, 2018; Tajeddin & Kamali, 2020).
In the classroom activities, modeling can be implemented by describing, comparing, summarizing, and evaluating language use that is appropriate for specific academic functions explicitly (Lukmawardani, 2022). Specifically, the teacher supplies the learners with model as a guide for the task in order to perform with same guidelines to achieve the goal of the task (Bar et al., 2022).
Sari & Rozimela (2021) highlighted that verifying learners’ understanding is a way to direct students toward becoming independent learners. As students become familiar with new material, it is a key for the teacher to evaluate students’ understanding (Yuvita, 2018). To give verification, the teacher can give positive and corrective feedback. The importance of feedback in learning writing is also stressed by Hasan and Karim (2019), who maintain that feedback enables learners to “observe and anchor their errors and become aware of how to progress their writing.”
There have been a number of researches on the use of scaffolding in teaching learning process which focus on some genres of texts. For examples, the studies conducted by Dewi &
Iswandari's (2017) and Widiyana & Sabiq (2021) that aimed at investigating the scaffolding strategy in teaching writing recount text and its challenges in implementing it. Meanwhile, Luthfi &
Sibarani's (2021) research intended to describe scaffolding strategies in teaching descriptive text and to find out the reasons underlying the teachers using certain theory. The other focuses of some studies on scaffolding in teaching process are about its usage in improving student literacy in primary school (Padmadewi & Artini, 2018), in developing critical thinking skills (Weinstein &
Preiss, 2017), and in increasing students’ writing
skills (Ikawati, 2020). Furthermore, there have been some researches that concerned on examining the effect of teacher scaffolding on students’ paragraph writing performance in Meneguzer secondary school, Amhara-Ethiopia.
(Gashaye & Muchie, 2021) and on students’
writing competency in online learning (Mahayasa et al., 2021).
From aforementioned studies, the research that concerns on the use of scaffolding in writing news item text has not much been explored. Therefore, the present research investigates types of scaffolding, the ways a teacher provides scaffolding, and benefits and challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text in tenth grade in EFL context in senior high school.
The findings of this research are expected to provide information about applicable scaffolding during teaching writing and encourage teachers to make a more collaborative classroom environment and to develop new ideas to improve learning process.
METHOD
This research employs qualitative approach, embracing characteristics of a case study. The case study approach is appropriate for this research because it provides an in-depth description and analysis toward the issue under study, namely scaffolding in teaching writing news item text to 10th grade of students. Some experts (Meesuk et al., 2020; Mertler, 2021;
Lufungulo et al., 2021) define, classroom action research is a collaborative, participatory method that enhances education by incorporating change and involving educators in improving their own practices. The multiple data resource from classroom observation, field data record, and interview have been employed in this research to avoid the bias of data.
This research was undertaken at one of state senior high schools in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia. The participants involved in this research were an English teacher and 27 students of tenth grade. The English teacher chosen was a teacher who was familiar with the concept teaching-learning cycle consisting of four stages.
Thus, scaffolding was predicted mostly occurred during the lesson. Meanwhile, tenth grade students had been chosen because at this grade, News Item text was taught.
There are two forms of data collection techniques used in the present research, those are classroom observation and interview. Both of techniques were used to categorize types of
scaffolding provided by the teacher, to investigate the ways the teacher provides scaffolding, and to figure out benefits and challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text.
Videos as tool of classroom observation technique was used to get deep comprehension of classroom interactions and to support researcher’s field notes. The video was then transcribed to discover the scaffolded interactions between the teacher and students.
To crosscheck the data from classroom observation, interview was used to acquire data on types of scaffolding, the way teacher provides scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text and the benefits and challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text. Semi-structured interview was applied to the teacher since it allowed the researcher to respond to the situation at the time, to the emerging worldview of the respondent, and to new ideas on the topic.
The questions in the interview which was designed in advanced were about the whole activities during learning process, the reasons of each activity conducted by the teacher, and teacher’s opinions about benefits and challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text.
Tape recorder was used to record the interview, the result of interview then was transcribed later by the researcher. The languages used in interview session were both Indonesian and English.
The data collected from classroom observation and interview were analyzed by using framework of curriculum-cycle (Hammond, 2001; Gibbons, 2002). In addition, the data were also analyzed based on theories of types of scaffolding (e.g Roehler and Cantlon (1997), Hammond (2001), Gibbons (2002), and Walqui (2006).
The data from the videos and interview were transcribed. During the process of reading the transcriptions, coding was employed by matching the data with research questions. The result of the analysis is described comprehensively and thoroughly in the result and discussion.
To ensure the validity and reliability of the data, the data from classroom observation and interview were cross-checked in order to make sure whether or not the data were consistent. The final step was analyzing the data by using framework of the theories, which will be presented in result and discussion.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
As mentioned previously, the objectives of this
research are to investigate types of scaffolding, the ways a teacher provides scaffolding, and benefits and challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing News Item text. The results of each research purpose will be elaborated below.
Types of scaffolding and the way the teacher provides scaffolding in teaching writing news item text
Based on the results, seven types of scaffolding were found to be used by the teacher. They are bridging, contextualizing, inviting students’
participation, schema building, modeling, offering explanation, and also verifying and clarifying students’ understanding.
Bridging is one type of scaffolding to creating a connection between new materials they just learn and concepts that they have already learned (Khatib & Chalak, 2022). This type of scaffolding occurred in one stage of the curriculum-cycle, that is Building the Field as will be discussed later.
The activities which are belonged to bridging can be listed and elaborated thoroughly below.
Bridging occurred in Building the Field when the teacher developed the students’ understanding of the topic and invited the students to share their knowledge about the latest issues of famous figure by showing some pictures. This activity showed the teacher had good understanding about how to stimulate her students because Hammond (2001) states that to develop effective language and literacy, a shared experience can be got from classroom discussion by using visual scaffolding before the use of reading and writing.
Besides, this activity seemed so interesting because many students involved and the use of pictures was also helpful. This statement is supported from the data of interview. Through the pictures, the teacher activated the students’ prior knowledge and understanding before new concepts are delivered.
This activity can be considered as good scaffolding because it engages students’ attention by activating students’ prior knowledge at the beginning of the lesson as suggested by Walqui (2006). This activity is also recommended by Gibbons (2002) because the dialogue in bridging constructs the students’ preconceptions to a deeper view of the truth matters for the question or issue at hand.
The activity above also can be considered as good scaffolding because it engaged students cognitively. In addition, the activities above can be also labeled as other types of scaffolding, contextualizing and inviting students’
participation. These ideas will be elaborated in the next subsequent section.
Contextualizing is intended to bring closer complex ideas of the topic will be taught to students’ experience (Hammond, 2001; Walqui, 2006). This type of scaffolding was provided by the teacher in Building the Field and Modeling stage.
In building the field stage, contextualizing was provided by the teacher when she used some relevant pictures to build interaction at the beginning of the section of teaching learning process. By analyzing the media that the teacher used, the teacher seemed creative how to unconsciously direct the students’ prior- knowledge to the materials (News Item text). This is relevant to what the teacher stated in interview.
What the teacher did could be considered as appropriate decision because Walqui (2006) says that using some picture means giving relevant illustration or meaningful metaphor for students to find out academic language (News Item text which they were going to learn) and students’
everyday language to have interaction with experts, teachers, and peers. This is also stated by Hammond (2001) that to avoid students’
confusion, teachers can provide new content with familiar concepts and new concepts with familiar content. Therefore, the complex ideas of News Item text became closer to students’ experience.
In Modeling stage, contextualizing occurred when the teacher informed the students about the implementation of News Item text in students’
daily life. It can be considered as contextualizing because the teacher made analogy of the purpose of News Item text based on students’ world as also asserted by Walqui (2006).
The analogy of the purpose of News Item text which was illustrated by the teacher made the content of the lesson simple and easy to understand because she brought it close to students’ daily life. This was also stated by the teacher. The way the teacher delivered the purpose of News Item text shows that she was a competent scaffolder because this activity is recommended by Lukmawardani (2022) who states that contextualizing is important and helpful to make students what is being taught as the teacher makes analogies based on student experience. Inviting Students Participant is an activity that is carried out after the teacher provide illustrations of some thoughts, feelings, or actions, students given the opportunity to participate in process that occurs (Lukmawardani, 2022). This type of scaffolding was applied by the teacher in
Modeling and Joint Construction stage. Some activities which are belonged to inviting students’
participation will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
In Modeling stage, inviting students’
participation occurred when the teacher checked students’ understanding about the use of reported speech. It indicates that the teacher invited the students to complete the challenge, changing direct sentence into indirect sentence.
The challenge was given after the teacher explained the concept of reported speech and also showed the well-structured sentences of reported speech. This activity shows that the teacher wanted her students to be an active learner. This is relevant with what the teacher stated in interview.
In Joint Construction stage, this type of scaffolding occurred in constructing News Item text collaboratively between the teacher and the students. This activity reflects that the teacher knew how to develop students’ ability in constructing a text, as Bar et al. (2022) state that challenging collaborative practices that stimulate their higher order thinking. This idea is supported by the data of interview.
Those activities in Modeling and Joint construction are relevant to Roehler and Cantlon (1997), that giving students opportunities to finish manageable task, answering teachers’ questions are ways to transverse the zone of proximal development by inviting them to be involved in the task. Making students to be involved during the lesson can be one way for teacher to check students’ understanding about the concept delivered previously. By doing those activities, the teacher applied the purpose of scaffolding which is to help students as active risk takers to work with increasing independence in other context-in other words, so they not only know what to think and do, but also know how to think and do (Hammond, 2001; Gibbons, 2002).
Schema building is scaffolding which was applied by the teacher during Building the Field and Modeling stage. Its purpose is to let students have general knowledge that can guide them to a detailed understanding to build students' understanding (Lukmawardani, 2022). Some activities of schema building are elaborated below.
In Building the Field stage, schema building occurred in the activity of reading a selected News Item text. It occurred when the teacher asked the students to guess content of a text based on its title. It shows that the teacher triggered the students to imagine what the text was about based
on the title. In this context, the title of the text was RI Radio Bans Bieber’s Songs over Insult and the students successfully guessed the content of the text based on the title.
This activity indicates that the teacher had good understanding how to avoid students’
confusion when they read the text in the next activity because this activity (schema) can reduce the ambiguity which possibly happens in reading a text (Gibbons, 2002; Walqui, 2006). This was relevant with what the teacher said in interview.
This activity also confirmed Bar et al.'s (2022) idea that schema is an active and creative process where the students interpret and predict a message based on their previous knowledge.
In Modeling stage, the activity of implementing schema building was similar to the activity of schema building in Building the Field stage, which was when the students were prompted by the teacher to guess what the text was about based on the title. The fragment of interaction above shows how the teacher encouraged the students to use the information they have known to foster an understanding of new concepts.
The fragment of instruction reflects that the students were encouraged to use their prior knowledge about The Avengers movie to foster an understanding of a new information or concept they will find in the text. This activity shows the teacher was aware how to assist her students to focus on important aspects of new information that they should be able to understand as supported by the data of interview. Besides, the excerpt above also reflects another type of scaffolding, which is verifying and clarifying students’ understanding.
This type of scaffolding is provided by the teacher to give explicit explanation about declarative, conditional, and procedural knowledge (Lukmawardani, 2022). Offering explanation was applied by the teacher in modeling and joint construction stages. The following paragraphs will list and elaborate the activities which are belonged to offering explanation.
In Modeling stage, the implementation of offering explanation was conducted by the teacher when she and her students explored a text. In this case, they discussed the content of the text first before analyzing the schematic structure and linguistic features of the text.
Offering explanation can be identified in forms of declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge, and conditional or situational knowledge. For
declarative knowledge, the teacher and the students highlighted the characteristics of News Item texts under discussion. In this context, it was the session when the teacher explained what was being learnt.
The procedural knowledge of offering explanation was shown through teacher’s explanation about how the text was constructed (schematic structures and linguistic features). It shows that the teacher explained where to put the broad picture and detail information of an issue in constructing the News Item text. She also informed the function of “newsworthy event‟ in News Item text explicitly.
This activity reflects that the teacher had good understanding when she should be implicit and explicit during giving instruction because Lukmawardani (2022) assert that explicit teaching develops students’ understanding about what is being learnt, why and when it is used, and how it is used. This was relevant with what the teacher stated in the interview.
Meanwhile, for linguistic features, the teacher explained the use of present and past perfect tenses, and the use of reported speech explicitly.
This teacher’s action shows that she was aware with the importance of mastering grammar in writing. This is supported by the data of interview. This activity confirmed Khatib &
Chalak (2022) statement that learning grammar is great value for students to extend students’
understanding in constructing meaning of the text and also to make them comprehend meaning of a text.
Triggering students’ understanding about grammatical structure of the text through explaining how to use reported speech, changing direct sentence into indirect sentence and vice versa, for instance, were conducted by the teacher explicitly and in detail. In addition, the teacher also informed the correct use of direct and indirect sentence.
Moreover, the conditional or situational knowledge as a part of offering explanation was reflected when the teacher explained explicitly about the purpose of News Item text. It is shown in the teacher-students interaction. That activity is in line with Hammond's idea (2001) that offering explanation can be reflected when a teacher tries to inform students about the benefit of a text in students’ daily life.
In Joint Construction, offering explanation occurred when the teacher asked the students to construct a text with teacher’s guidance. It can be reflected when the teacher re-explained the
characteristics of News Item text when there was misunderstanding of the concept of News Item text. The fragment of the teacher and the students’
interaction above reflects that the teacher recalled what they have learnt before during constructing a text collaboratively.The activity above indicates that the teacher was aware with the students’
background knowledge of schematic structures of News Item text because knowledge is built on a previous understanding (Tajeddin et al., 2020).
Modeling is another type of scaffolding occurred in this present research. The purpose of modeling is to give clear examples for assisting students to see or hear what a developing product looks like, its purpose, structures, and language features when a new task is introduced (Sarmiento-Campos et al., 2022). As its name, modeling was mostly reflected in Modeling stage.
In Modeling stage, modeling was applied by the teacher in some activities such as describing and explaining. Those were when the teacher explicitly described the characteristics of News Item text, providing clear explanation about generic structures and linguistic features of News Item text in detail, and it could be also identified when the teacher reviewed the concept of reported speech in form of assignment. The teacher also showed how to construct an appropriate News Item text.
Regarding what the teacher did in applying modeling, it reflects that the teacher was aware how to make sure the students imitated what they saw. This is in line with Yong’s (2022) statement that modeling referes to directly showing students what to do in the activities or tasks.
Verifying and clarifying students’
understanding is another type of scaffolding which could be identified in the process of teaching writing News Item text in this present research. This scaffolding is aimed at checking whether students’ understanding is reasonable or unreasonable through verification or clarification (Heron & Webster, 2019). Verifying and clarifying students’ understanding occurred in Building the Field, Modeling, and Joint Construction Stages. The following paragraphs will list and elaborate some activities which are considered as verifying and clarifying students’
understanding.
Firstly, verifying students’ understanding occurred in Building the Field, Modeling, and Joint Construction stages. In this context, clarifying students’ understanding deals with giving supportive feedback or reward as an appreciation of appropriate students’ answer.
In Building the Field stage, verifying was implemented by the teacher during sharing experience activities. Another verifying response was also given by the teacher when the students offered an appropriate answer towards the teacher’s questions. verification was given after the teacher ensured that the students offered a correct answer. In Modeling stage, verifying students’ understanding occurred when the teacher gave reward for the students’ answer and checked students’ comprehension about grammar.
Based on the interaction, the verification appeared after the teacher made sure the transformation of direct speech into indirect speech was totally correct. In this context, the teacher specifically checked to be of the sentence.
Regarding the excerpts in Building the Field and Modeling stages, it shows that the teacher was aware to make the students feel appreciative and to make them engage during the instruction as stressed by Hasan and Karim (2019), who maintain that feedback enables learners to
“observe and anchor their errors and become aware of how to progress their writing.” This is also supported by the data from interview.
Secondly, clarifying students’ understanding occurred in Building the Field, Modeling, and Joint Construction stages. In the present research, clarifying students’ understanding can be categorized in two parts, giving follow-up questions and also giving revision. Follow-up questions were given by the teacher to the students during Building the Field and Modeling stages, meanwhile, revision was provided by the teacher in Joint Construction stage.
In Building the Field stage, clarifying students’
understanding occurred when the students could not share their idea smoothly. Hence, the teacher has an obligation to clarify students’ response by giving feedback interaction (follow-up questions).
reflects how the teacher encouraged her students when the students’ answers were limited to one- or two-word utterances in response to her questions. In Modeling stage, clarifying students’
understanding was also implemented by the teacher when she gave follow-up question. It occurred in the activity of guessing the content of a text based on its title. The follow-up question when the students’ answer was too general.
The excerpts in Building the Field and Modeling stages which have shown above reflect that the teacher had good understanding to trigger her students to expand their idea and to be more critical. It was relevant with what the teacher stated in interview which will be discussed later.
Universal pattern in any learning situation was appropriate to be conducted in that situation because corrective feedback and verifying students’ understanding is a a way to direct students towards becoming independent student (Sari & Rozimela, 2021).
Moreover, the interaction above shows the teacher took her role as ore a knowledgeable peer because she assisted her students to traverse gap in zone of proximal development. It conformed Sylvia et al. (2022) idea that there is a gap for young learners to produce their own language which needs to be filled and guided by teachers.
In Joint Construction stage, clarifying students’ understanding was provided by the teacher in checking students’ grammar understanding. The teacher students’ interaction above shows how the teacher checked students’
understanding about the use of simple past and present perfect tense. And corrective feedback was automatically occurred through clarifying students’ response when the students’ answers were incorrect. This activity conformed Agu &
Iyamu (2020) idea that clarifying students’
understanding help learners extend their level of understanding and accomplish any given tasks independently.
Another corrective feedback in joint construction stage was also identified when the teacher and students collaboratively constructed a News Item text. The excerpt above reflects that clarification was given by the teacher when the idea was not written in good order. In giving clarification, the teacher used interrogative sentences.
The use of questions above indicates the teacher was an intuitive partner during constructing a text collaboratively. It can be considered as good activity because Hammond (2001) and (Gibbons, 2002) assert that the interrogative sentence said by the teacher is non- directive support which makes the students continue rereading while writing. In this context, the interrogative sentences used sare similar to the interrogative sentences suggested by Hammond (2001) and Gibbons (2002) such as “does this make sense?”, “can anybody see anything that needs to fix up?”, “can we use a different word here?”, “how we will write this?”, “is that the best way to say it?”
In addition, all of activities mentioned above are also relevant to Yildiz & Celik (2020), who argue that a teacher’s guidance and assistance in providing temporary support is to develop students’ new understanding, new abilities, and
new concept of task that they will not quite be able to manage on their own.
The benefits of scaffolding in teaching writing news item text
The teacher who involved in this present research stated that there are some benefits of providing scaffolding during the learning process. She argued that scaffolding could connect students’
prior knowledge with a new concept, engage her students, minimize the level confusion of students, and build students’ self-confidence.
Each benefit has been stated will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
To begin, scaffolding connects students’ prior knowledge to a new concept. These benefits appeared after the teacher applied two types of scaffolding, which were bridging and schema building.
In this context, the teacher stated that scaffolding took its role as a bridge between what the students have already known and what the students is possible to know. The teacher also argued that without that “bridge”, the process of delivering materials to the students probably would take long time. The “bridge‟ in this context can be implemented by providing visual scaffolding and by building mind-mapping.
Those usually occur when the teacher wants to explore the students’ experience or their idea which they have stored in the brain. This argument is reasonable because Hammond (2001), Gibbons (2002), and Walqui (2006) state that scaffolding builds a personal connection through collecting information and sharing experience between the students and the subject matter to show how new material is relevant to the student’s experience as an individual.
Secondly, scaffolding also can engage students’ attention. This benefit occurred after the teacher applied two types of scaffolding such as bridging and inviting students’ participation. The teacher claimed that to make a new concept seemed attractive in front students, she had to find out a trick to involve the students during the lesson. In this context, scaffolding shows its advantages when the teacher used pictures and videos in ice-breaking step to share the students’
experience. The teacher added that visual scaffolding was really helpful almost in every learning process. That idea is in line with Bar et al.'s (2022) vision that utilizing verbal and non- verbal assistance such as pictures, videos and analogies offer a lot of possibilities to stimulate students to link with their previous knowledge for
a better understanding.
The teacher added that directed questions made the students active and unconsciously engage. This statement is in line with Omoniyi &
Torru (2018), Ikawati (2020), Lhadon & Wangmo (2022), Narina (2022), and Tabib (2022) statement that scaffolded interaction with friends makes students gradually become autonomous language users when they have chances to relate conversational language to academic discourse, both written and spoken.
Furthermore, Dewi & Iswandari (2017) found that the benefit of using scaffolding was engaging students in meaningful and dynamic discussions both in the small and the large class. By using the type of scaffolding, which was using guidance for students, students could have meaningful and dynamic discussion because they could get feedback for their learning process.
Thirdly, minimizing the level of confusion of the students is another benefit of scaffolding occurred after applying modeling, offering explanation, and verifying and clarifying students’
understanding. The teacher argued this benefit of scaffolding could be reach through giving clear explanation of complex materials in teaching writing. The teacher seems understand how to help her students comprehend material easily because Yong (2022) state that it is clear that explicit teaching can connect knowledge to real world context to approach academic tasks effectively and successfully.
The last, scaffolding helps students to build their self-confidence. The teacher stated her argument that students’ self-confidence automatically came up in accomplishing task in the last cycle of teaching writing News Item text when all of strategies or scaffolding had done appropriately and when knowledge had transferred successfully. This argument is in line with Hammond (2001) and Gibbons (2002) notion that when the support is reduced, the learners are able to reach their maximal performance to carry out similar tasks in the future independently.
The challenges of scaffolding in teaching writing news item text
Even though there are several benefits of scaffolding, the teacher stated that implementing meaningful scaffolding could be considered as challenging activities in whole-class setting. It became challenging because of some reasons such as the amount of students in the classroom, time constraints, and demands on teacher. Those
challenges will be discussed below by relating to some theories.
To begin, the amount of the students in the classroom becomes a challenge for the teacher to implement scaffolding spread evenly. The teacher informed in a class which consists of 27 students, her chance to interact with each individual student was impossible, moreover that class consisted of students with different intelligence. Therefore, she had to manage her way in providing scaffolding during the lesson. This finding is also in line with what Kamil (2018), Van Driel et al., (2018), Widiyana & Sabiq (2021) found that one of challenges faced by the teacher in using scaffolding was the large number of students with various levels that requires the teacher to manage and find such good ways to provide scaffolding during the lesson. What the teacher stated is relevant to Gökçe (2022) that instructional scaffolding provides the ground for expert-novice interaction which is crucial for students’ better understanding. The teacher’s statement is also relevant to Tabib’s (2022) statement that in ZPD, it requires the teacher/ competent learner to have various competencies in the classroom to assists a less competent one in a task or solving a problem.
The second challenge is time constraints. The teacher argued that 2 x 45 minutes per meeting was not enough in teaching English, especially writing. Therefore, the whole process of teaching writing was done in six meetings. It took so long because teaching writing advocated the teacher to conduct deep learning of complex content, moreover when re-explaining the content was needed if there were still misunderstanding between the students. So, she had to make sure that all of her students mastered the content before moving to other content. Time constrains as the challenge in using scaffolding is also relevant with the findings found by Kamil (2018) and Widiyana & Sabiq (2021). Besides, the teacher’s decision of giving clarification to support the instruction was also stated by Hasan & Karim (2019) who believes that clarifying is indicated as a good way to improve students’ writing skill.
This argument is also relevant to Idoghor &
Kasumu (2022) who assert that providing scaffolding in complex topic is time-consuming because it is to get maximal development of students, deep learning is suggested.
The last challenge is demands on teacher. The teacher argued that this problem occurred because of the previous challenges mentioned. In a large class with students who have different intelligence, the teacher has to teach a complex
current topic and make sure the goal of the lesson is delivered. The teacher added that this was difficult situation for her because she had to find out each student’s prior knowledge, his/her misunderstanding about the current topic, and also his/her competencies before the teacher providing scaffolding. This argument is in line with Idoghor & Kasumu (2022) who state that before implementing effective scaffolding, the teacher needs to selecting appropriate scaffolds that match the diverse learning and communication styles of students, knowing when to remove the scaffolds so the student does not rely on the support and not knowing the students well enough (their cognitive and affective abilities) to provide appropriate scaffolds.
CONCLUSION
Teaching writing, especially News Item text, is the area in which scaffolding is potentially applicable. Based on the findings, seven various types of scaffolding are provided by the teacher during learning process including bridging, contextualizing, inviting students’ participation, schema building, offering explanation, modeling, and verifying and clarifying students’
understanding.
The benefits of giving scaffolding are to connect students’ prior knowledge with a new concept, to engage students in learning process, to minimize the level confusion of students, and to build students’ self-confidence. There are three challenges of providing scaffolding such as the amount of students in the classroom, time constraints, and demands on teacher.
English teacher should master the knowledge of genres, the understanding of teaching learning- cycle, and strategies to help students to tackle a current topic. It is said so since writing is challenging for students to master because of the difficulties which not only lie on generating and organizing ideas, but also lie on translating these ideas into a readable text (Gibbons, 2002). Hence, effective instruction in teaching writing is possible to be conducted to produce successful outcomes. In short, the more difficult materials, the more scaffolding should be provided by a teacher.
This research was carried out with a small number of subjects due to the time constraint.
Therefore, the findings will not be as rich as the research conducted with a large number of subjects. Regarding the shortcoming stated before, there are some recommendations for further research. Firstly, it would be more useful
for further research to use a bigger number of subjects in different context to get richer and more reliable data. Secondly, regarding some activities during learning process which use group work, interactions between or among peers should be discovered to find out another dimension in the use of scaffolding. It is considered to be important to gain various scaffolding provided by the teacher.
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