A case study examining the impact of scaffolding on the summary writing of 6th grade students

This case study explores the implementation of scaffolding in foreign language writing in a sixth grade classroom setting. In this study, Vygotsky's (1978, 1986) socio-cultural framework of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and scaffolding writing (Ross,1976) are used as the theoretical basis to study the development of foreign language writing. The study aims at investigating the impact of scaffolding on sixth grades level of students' writing, the students' attitude towards teacher scaffolding and peer review. The main purpose of the study is to determine if the students who received teacher's scaffold on their writing and peer checked themselves would score better on writing summary or not. For this purpose, 20 primary students (in the sixth grade) at TED Gaziantep College participated in the study. The data were collected through quantitative and qualitative data collection instruments. The pre-test and post-test were given and the results provided the quantitative data along with the teacher scaffold on the students' writing summaries for eight weeks. The qualitative data came from the interview made at the end of the study. During eight weeks' period, students wrote summaries of short stories and the summaries were corrected and evaluated using rubrics. The analysis of the quantitative data indicated that the students who received scaffolding improved in writing after six weeks' implementation. The analysis of the questionnaire showed that the students enjoyed writing learning with the guidance of teacher scaffold and studying with their peers during the process. Key Words: Scaffolding, Zone of Proximal Development, Writing Development