Scaffolded Textual Input Enhancement and Teaching Stress Patterns to EFL Learners
Payame Noor University, Iran
ABSTRACT
The present study investigated the influence of scaffolded textual input enhancement on the learning of word stress patterns in EFL learners. In so doing, one experimental and one control group were selected with 10 participants assigned to each group who were recruited through convenient sampling technique. The participants in the experimental group received the scaffolded instruction of enhanced texts, while the participants in the control group were given the unscaffolded instruction of the same enhanced texts. The treatment for the two groups was different in a single aspect in that the instruction of the experimental group was scaffolded through models presented by Walqui (2006). In other words, the participants were provided with additional support in pronouncing the words with correct stress pattern through modeling, exemplification and explanation techniques performed by the instructor. The results from the paired samples test indicated that both groups had statistically significant progress rates after the treatment. However, the results from the independent samples test revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between the average progress rate of the control and the experimental group. In other words, it was found that the mean of the posttest scores in the experimental group was statistically higher than that of the control group. Therefore, the results confirmed that scaffolded textual input enhancement had a fairly significant impact on the learning rate of English word stress patterns among EFL learners.
KEYWORDS
Textual Input Enhancement, Scaffolding, Stress Patterns, EFL Learners