ACTIVATING STUDENTS’ SCHEMATATHROUGH

SCAFFOLDING INSTRUCTIONS AT PRE - SPEAKING STAGE

BACKGROUND
I teach English at North Thang Long Economic – Technical college which is a
vocational college located in the North of Ha Noi capital. It is under the leadership of Hanoi
Training and Education Office. There are over five thousand students at the age of 18 to 25
who are being trained annually at my college in seven majors related to Economic and
Technical. Because the age of the students are different, so their level of English is mixed.
After finishing the course at my college, students will be provided enough knowledge
and practical skills in their majors to meet the demands of the society. Therefore, all of our
English programs focus on four skills. When students complete the compulsory modules,
they are expected to perform English well to deal with their jobs in companies and factories,
especially in the foreign ones or to continue studying further.
The area of teaching English that interests me most is speaking skill as this session
requires teachers to analyze strategies carefully before applying them in speaking activities
effectively. In addition, teachers will be more creative and have more experience when they
are trying to find out the significant tasks for the lessons. Furthermore, controlling speaking
sessions every day also helps the teachers become more skillful in using the language.
In speaking session, my students usually encounter some difficulties such as the
pronunciation, using vocabulary and confidence in front of the class,… but the biggest
matter I would like to mention is that they can’t use their schemata in fast as well as
effectively when they want to express their ideas, especially at pre – speaking stage.
I would like to pay my special attention to this aspect because it is my students’
strength. At lower levels the students focus a lot on vocabulary and grammars that related to
the national final examination. Consequently, If I find out suitable strategies to exploit this
good point, my students’ speaking abilities can be improved quite well in short time.
By doing this research, I would like to find out if scaffolding instructions at pre-
speaking stage can help my students activate their prior knowledge or not.

LITERATTURE REVIEW
One of the common goals of foreign language teaching is that students should speak the
language that they are learning clearly and accurately enough. The teaching of speaking, just
like the teaching of other language skills, comprises three stages: pre- speaking, while-
speaking and post-speaking activities. Speaking is the productive process, so teachers often
use many strategies to activate students’ prior knowledge. Among the strategies, scaffolding
instructions is considered the best one in teaching speaking.
1. Teaching speaking

In the communicate model of language teaching, teachers help their students develop this
body of knowledge by providing authentic practice that prepares students for real-life
communication situations. They help their students develop the ability to produce
grammatically correct, logically connected sentences that are appropriate to specific
contexts, and to do so using acceptable (that is, comprehensible) pronunciation (http://
www.nclrc.org/essentials/speaking/spindex.htm).
Teaching speaking has been undervalued and English language teachers have continued
to teach speaking just as a repetition of drills or memorization of dialogues. However,
today's world requires that the goal of teaching speaking should improve students'
communicative skills, because, only in that way, students can express themselves and
learn how to follow the social and cultural rules appropriate in each communicative
circumstance Minggu ( 2009).
Speaking is the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and
non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts. And in teaching speaking, what teachers do is
help learners to use language as a mean of expressing ideas accurately Chaney (1998).
In order to teach a speaking lesson effectively, teachers must choose the appropriate
strategies to improve students’ abilities in all stages, especially the ways to help students
activate their schemata at pre – speaking one before approaching to the others.
2. Schemata
Schemata (prior knowledge) is the organizing factor of individuals’ thought processes.
New experiences are integrated into these organized thought patterns and establish the basis
upon which learners make inferences about new and future events in an attempt to maintain
a stable worldview (Ackerson, Flick, & Lederman, 2000).
Schemata has long been considered the most important factor influencing learning and
student achievement. The amount and quality of prior knowledge positively influence both
knowledge acquisition and the capacity to apply higher-order cognitive problem-solving
skills, MSc, Nina Katajavuori (2008).
Ausubel’s statement (1968, p.iv), “the most important single factor influencing
learning is what the learner already knows; ascertain this and teach him[her] accordingly” .
As a results, we can understand prior knowledge as generic knowledge. Each general
category will include slots for all the components, or features that are included in it and all
general categories are embedded one within another at different levels of abstraction. The
relationships among them are conceived to be like webs, therefore, each one is
interconnected with many other.
3. Activate schemata

Activating Schemata (Prior Knowledge) refers to the practice of beginning a lesson by

bringing up topics with which the students already have some familiarity. By putting the
upcoming lesson materials into a familiar context for the students, the teacher is giving them
a context into which they can then assimilate the new information and understanding. (Beth
Lewis About.com Guide since 1999).
Widmayer (2005) wrote “In order for learners to effectively process information, their
existing information related to the new content need to be activated”.
Holmes (1983) agreed that activating of background knowledge of poor learners may be
beneficial in helping them become more aware of what they know and don’t know so that
they are attentive to contradictory and new information in expository material they study.
From the writers’ point of view , activating prior knowledge is a necessary and useful
stage to help students to approach new knowledge easier. When students are activated at the
beginning of the lesson, teacher will realize the basic knowledge of the students to adapt the
methods in teaching better. In addition, students also understand what additional knowledge
they should improve to explore the new one more effectively.
4. Scaffolding

Scaffolding represents the helpful interactions between adult and child that enable the
child to do something beyond his or her independent efforts. A scaffold is a temporary
framework that is put up for support and access to meaning and taken away as needed when
the child secures control of success with a task. Cazden (1983) defined a scaffold as “a
temporary framework for construction in progress” (p. 6). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Instructional_scaffolding).
“In scaffolding instruction a more knowledgeable other provides scaffolds or supports
to facilitate the learner’s development. The scaffolds facilitate a student’s ability to build on
prior knowledge and internalize new information (Rachel R. Van Der Stuyf, 2002, P.2)”.
An important aspect of scaffolding instruction is that the scaffolds are temporary. As
the learner’s abilities increase the scaffolding provided by the more knowledgeable other is
progressively withdrawn. Finally, the learner is able to complete the task or master the
concepts independently (Chang, Sung, & Chen, 2002, p. 7). Therefore, the goal of the
educator when using the scaffolding teaching strategy is for the student to become an
independent and self-regulating learner and problem solver (Hartman, 2002). As the
learner’s knowledge and learning competency increases, the educator gradually reduces the
supports provided (Ellis, Larkin, Worthington, n.d.).
Scaffolding plays a very important role in teaching because learners are helped step by
step in exploring knowledge through scaffolding activities. The good point of scaffolding is
to provide students support at first, and when the learners’ knowledge and learning
increases, the provided support will be reduced gradually. By that time, students become
independent, self-regulating learners and problem solvers.
In the definitions and studies above, we can have an overall view of teaching
speaking, prior knowledge, activating prior knowledge and scaffolding. In each espect, the
writers have illustrated and explained the concepts clearly and persuasively. In teaching
speaking, the writers discuss a lot about language competence in teaching and studying
language. In prior knowledge session, the important role of prior knowledge in studying is
mostly discussed. With the discussions about the activation of prior knowledge and
scaffolding parts, Widmayer (2005) and Holmes (1983) talked about the importance of
activating prior knowledge in studying. Rachel R. Van Der Stuyf (2002), Chang, Sung, &
Chen (2002), Hartman (2002) and (Ellis, Larkin, Worthington, n.d.) discussed about a
scaffolds facilitate students’ abilities to build on prior knowledge and the advantages of
using scaffolding in teaching. All of these, no one has studied about “Activating students’
prior knowledge through scaffolding instructions in pre-speaking stage” , therefore, I will
need to conduct research on this topic to improve my students’ ability to speak English.
Because my students study a lot of vocabulary, grammars and writing skill related to their
national examination at high school, but in every speaking lesson they are not able to use
their prior knowledge in practice speaking. After studying the theories of activating prior
knowledge and scaffolding as well as some other related studies, I have found that there will
be a lot of benificial for my students if I apply scaffolding instructions in teaching them
speaking. I decide to choose scaffolding instructions to activate my students’ knowledge as
scaffolding’s function is provide first support, so I can design the suitable scaffolding tasks
to activate my students in pre-speaking stage before approaching new knowledge.

References:
Minggu, 24 Mei 2009. Teaching Speaking: Activities to Promote Speaking in Senior High
School.( http://greatestscientificofenglish.blogspot.com/2009/05/teaching-speaking-
activities-to-promote.html)
1. Ausubel’s statement (1968, p.IV). Novice and Expert Teachers’ Conceptions of

Learners’ Prior Knowledge. (http://web.duke.edu/arc/documents/Meyer_Novice

ExpertTeachers.pdf)
2. Ackerson, Flick, & Lederman, 2000. Novice and Expert Teachers’ Conceptions of

Learners’ Prior Knowledge. (http://web.duke.edu/arc/documents/Meyer_Novice

ExpertTeachers.pdf)
3. Research article: The Relevance of Prior Knowledge in Learning and Instructional

Design ; Telle Hailikari, MSc, Nina Katajavuori, PhD, and Sari Lindblom-Ylanne,
PhD University of Helsinki Submitted November 6, 2007; accepted February 24,
2008; published October 15, 2008.
(http://k6educators.about.com/od/educationglossary/g/gactivprknow.htm).
4. Beth Lewis About.com Guide since 1999. Activating definition
(http://k6educators.about.com/od/educationglossary/g/gactivprknow.htm).
5. Amber D Warsnack, 1996. The effects of actvating prior knowledge before reading
on students with and without learning abilities. ( http://soar.wichita.edu/ xmlui/
bitstream/handle/10057/256/t06002.pdf;jsessionid=D8B98336D14B55DDD2D61B
C6CE0540F3?sequence=3).
6. Rachel R. Van Der Stuyf. 2002. Scaffolding as a Teaching Strategy