Annual Review of Education, Communication and Language Sciences, Volume 1, 2004

STORYREADING IN AN EFL PRIMARY CLASSROOM: AN ANALYSIS OF TEACHER-STUDENT INTERACTION

CHEN-YING LI

Abstract

Many researchers claim that stories can bring a lot of benefits for children in language development, but the majority of literature treats the use of stories in the context of teaching English as a first language.  In this project, the researcher designed a story-based EFL program for a primary school teacher to implement in her class in the south of Taiwan, in order to know how it facilitates pupils learning English.  This paper draws on the transcription from a primary school classroom in Taiwan when the teacher introduces a new story with a big book to fourth graders.  The analysis investigates teacher-pupil interaction in the whole-class setting from a sociocultural perspective.  This paper illustrates what strategies the teacher uses to achieve the functions of scaffolding, and enhance pupils’ comprehension, as well as the features of pupils’ participation in the classroom discourse. 

Introduction

    In the last decade, a trend of starting to learn English during primary school has spread across Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan.  Due to changes in the educational policy of starting English instruction in many countries, the best practice of teaching English to children in the foreign language setting is receiving more attention.

Stories have been widely used in English speaking countries to develop children’s literacy.  The use of stories in the classroom is claimed to have many benefits for young learners in language development (Elley 1989; Wright 1997; Garvie 1990), such as increasing motivation, stimulating imagination, and developing fluency in language skills.  However, in Taiwan games and drills are dominant teaching techniques in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom.  We do not know if the holistic approach, such as teaching English through stories, is applicable to Taiwan, an EFL setting.  Therefore, it is necessary to see what will actually happen in the story-based EFL classroom in Taiwan.

    Allwright (1984, p.156) indicates that the processes of classroom interaction decide what language learning opportunities are available for learners.  Ellis (1990) also claims “any second language learning that takes place must in some way result from the process of interaction the learner takes part in” (p.91).  This study is thus aimed to investigate the features of teacher-student interaction in the story-based classroom in Taiwan in order to understand how this approach facilitates students learning English. 

Social constructivism

According to Vygotsky, a pioneer of social constructivism, learning occurs in social contexts with the help of other people and language.  One of the most important concepts he proposes is the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD).  He defines ZPD as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent  problem-solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky 1978, p.84). 

    In other words, ZPD is the space within which a learner is able to perform a task beyond his or her own current level of competence under assisted support.  ZPD specifies that development cannot occur without the proper amount of assistance.  Teaching in the ZPD requires a sensitivity to students’ current abilities and their potential development.  

    Scaffolding is another important concept proposed by Wood, Brunner, and Ross (1976).  It refers to the temporary assistance which helps the learners accomplish a task beyond their actual level.  They indicate this assistance provided by experts can be classified into six scaffolding functions: (1) recruiting the learner’s interest, (2) reducing degrees of freedom, (3) maintaining direction, (4) marking critical features, (5) controlling frustration, and (6) demonstrating (p.98).

The notion of ZPD and the metaphor of scaffolding were originally used to describe how children acquire their first language in interaction with adults but they can also be applied to the second language context (Anton 1999).  Storytelling/reading involves the interaction between the storyteller and the audience to some extent.  It can therefore fit into this interactional framework: the listeners interact with the storyteller in a shared context, which refers to the story (Zaro & Salaberr 1995).

Classroom interaction and second language acquisition

Many researchers believe classroom interaction may contribute to second language acquisition, but little agreement about what type of classroom interaction is the most effective for second language acquisition (Ellis 1990, p.95).

    The contribution of classroom interaction to language learning can be understood by considering the input learners have access to and the output learners can produce as well as the mediation process between the available input and actual language development (from input to intake).  Intake refers to ‘the mental activity that takes learners from the input to their interlangauge grammars’ (Gass 1997, p.137).  Among the theories of second language acquisition, the most well known theories are probably Krashen’s input hypothesis and Swain’s output hypothesis.  Krashen (1985) states language acquisition occurs when the learner receives language input that is a little beyond his/her current stage of competence.  The language input is made comprehensible ‘by utilizing context, extra-linguistic information, and our knowledge of the world” (Krashen 1994, p.54).  Swain (1985) emphasizes the importance of output and argues that learners should be provided the opportunities to develop their linguistic abilities and test their hypotheses meaningfully so their production ‘may force the learner to move from semantic processing to syntactic processing’ (p.249). Regarding the process of moving from input to intake, Gass (1997) indicates mediating factors should involve time pressure, frequency, affect (social distance, status, motivation and attitude), prior knowledge, salience, and attention.

    Ellis (1990) proposes the optimal conditions for classroom language learning based on the theories of second language acquisition.  He emphasizes that the learners must have the need to use the target language, and the opportunities to initiate and control topics.  Teachers and learners should make sure they are understood by using interactional strategies.  The learners should be able to participate in the planned and unplanned discourse, but feel free to select when to participate.  The teacher has to provide scaffolds for learners to produce the language structures beyond their current level.  Ellis further indicates that this kind of optimal interaction is more likely to happen in meaning-focused instruction than in form-focus instruction.  These optimal conditions can serve as criteria to examine story-based classroom interaction.

Theoretical framework

The theoretical framework used in this research is shown in Figure 1.  It was devised  by Williams and Burden (1997, p.43) to explain the teaching-learning process from the social constructivist’s point of view.  According to their interpretation, social constructivism stresses the dynamic learning process between teachers, learners and tasks in social contexts.  Each factor interacts with each other. 

Figure 1: Williams and Burden's model of the teaching-learning process

from a social constructivist's  point of view

When this model is applied to the story-based classroom, it can be interpreted as follows.  When the teacher is telling a story to the learners, he has to arouse their interest and maintain their attention. In order to make the language input comprehensible, the teacher needs to provide adequate scaffolding by adjusting his speech, or providing the extralinguistic clues to link language to the learners’ prior knowledge.  The learners have to make use of extralinguistic clues, use their previous knowledge, and link it to their life experience to construct meaning.  The task, which in this case refers to stories, is the interface between the teacher and learners.  It contains episodically linked sentences with pictures, repetition and predictable patterns of events, so it is easier to comprehend and remember for young learners (Cameron 2001).  The story can serve as a stimulus for speaking because it triggers pupils to express their feelings after listening to the story (Wright 1995).  If the stories are used properly in the classroom, it is assumed that they will create an optimal learning environment for language acquisition to take place.

This study

To my understanding, in the south of Taiwan stories are rarely used in the English primary classroom.  In this research, the lesson plans are mainly designed by the researcher but conducted by the teacher who has been teaching English for two years without formal storytelling training experience.  This research required the teacher to implement eight story-based lessons within about one month.  Her class consisted of 10 boys and 20 girls at the fourth grade level (aged 10).  

    Data were collected by classroom observation and audio/video recordings.  The classroom discourse was transcribed for detailed analysis.  The analysis focuses on what strategies the teacher adopts to achieve the functions of scaffolding (Wood et al. 1976; Cameron 2001) to ensure pupils’ comprehension and participation as well as pupils’ responses in the storyreading process.  For the examples of six functions of scaffolding, please see Appendix 1.  In addition, the perceptions of the teacher and the pupils toward the story-based lesson are explored through interview data, which were collected after class. 

For this paper, I only look into data collected from one lesson.  In this lesson, before reading the story (The Royal Dinner), the teacher sets the topic, introduces the characters and title, and asks the pupils to guess what the dinner will be (see extract 1).  After the pre-reading activities, the teacher reads the story with the big book and realia to the pupils, and asks them to make predictions during the reading process (see extracts 2 to 4).  For the transcription conventions, please refer to Appendix 2.

Results

Extract 1

1 2	T:	Let’s look at the picture first…Let’s look at the picture. What do you see?
3	L:	I see [a cook].
4 5 6	T:	[What did ] you see?... A cook? Who is the cook? Okay, with the hat, right?...a man with a hat…in the middle… very good…two checks.
7	L:	(unintelligible)
8 9 10 11	T:	A…king…a king, it’s up here (T points to the king on the picture.)…right?... with a crown  (T uses a gesture to show wearing a crown.)… 頭上有什麼東西? ((tr: What’s on the head?))
		(9 lines are taken)
12 13	T:	What else do you see? …Anyone?. (T raises her hand to show if anyone knows the answer, s/he should raise her/his hand.)
14	LL:	(silence)
15	T:	A cook, a king… and what else?
16	L:	(L raises his had.)The queen
17 18 19	T:	The queen… that’s right…. a king, a queen (T points to the king and the queen on the picture.)… How about their children?... Do they have children?
20	G4:	(G4 points to the prince and the princess on the picture.)
21	LL	Yes.
22 23	T:	Yes...Here (T points to the prince and princess on the picture)…they are here…
24	B2:	(B2 comes to the front to see the picture.)
25	T:	And what are they called?... What are they called?
26	LL:	(Silence)
27 28	T:	They are called… prince for the boy (T points to the prince on the picture.)… right?... <prince>
29	LL	Prince.
30	T:	And this one? (T points to the princess on the picture.)
31	LL	(silence)
32	T:	°Princess°
33	LL	Princess.
34	T:	That’s right. <Princess>
35	LL:	Princess.
36	T:	<Princess>
37	L:	Princess.
38 39 40	T:	And these people (T points to the royal family on the picture.) are called…royal family, Okay? [Royal family](T points to the royal family on the picture.)
41	LL:	[Royal family]
42	T:	皇室,…皇家 ((tr: Royal family))

At the beginning of this extract, the teacher directs the students’ attention (scaffolding function 1) toward the cover page of the big book and initiates an elicitation by means of a display question.  After the pupil’s response (line 3), the teacher accepts his contribution by repeating his answer (line 4) but expands it by indicating the critical features (scaffolding function 4) of the character: a cook with the hat (line 5).  She does not only evaluate the pupil’s response by saying “very good” but gives him two checks (line 6) for encouragement.  From lines 8 to 11, the teacher marks the critical features of a king (scaffolding function 4).  

    In line 12 the teacher then continues to prompt the pupils’ reply with another display question and a gesture (raise her hand) to get pupils’ attention.  When there is no response from the pupils (line 14), the teacher prompts them by restating the previous answers and shortening the question (line 15), then reformulates her question to provide a clue (scaffolding function 2) in line 19.  G4 replies non-verbally by pointing to the picture in line 20.  The teacher accepts G4’s answer but challenges the pupils to reply verbally in line 25 to assess their current level.  When the pupils seem unable to contribute, the teacher gives the partial answer in line 27 by highlighting the critical feature (scaffolding function 4) of ‘prince’ by saying ‘for the boy’ and pointing to the picture, and then models (scaffolding function 6) in line 28.  She challenges the pupils again in line 30 for another character.  Without any reply from the pupils, the teacher encourages them to reply by making a low voice for “princess” (line 32).  This simplifies the task so some pupils can complete it with assistance (line 33).  At the end of extract 1, the teacher establishes the concept of “royal family” by referring to what they have just learned, associating it to the picture (line 38, 40), and the first language equivalent (line 42).

Extract 2:

1	T:	(intelligible) Now the story is going to begin…(T opens the big book.)
2	LL:	(intelligible)
3	L:	Waw!(exclamation)
4 5 6	T:	Okay, the king told the cook…I want ham for my dinner…ham for my dinner…or it’s off with your head… ham for my dinner (T shows ham.), okay?
7	B1:	熱狗喔? ((tr: hot dog))
8	LL:	(Pupils look at the picture)怎麼這麼大哦! ((tr: Why so big?))
9 10	T:	And the queen…The queen told the cook. I want cheese for my dinner, cheese...Oh, no cheese, sorry… A picture.
		(4 lines are taken)
11 12 13 14 15	T: B3 T:	(unintelligible) a picture of cheese…The queen again…The queen said…I want cheese for my dinner…[cheese for my dinner]or [那裡有一隻老鼠] ((tr: There is a mouse over there) [it’s off with your head]
16	B2	[Ar?老師,那是老鼠] ((tr: Teacher, that’s a mouse.))
17	T:	Okay?=
18	B2:	=Ar?那是[老鼠] ((tr: That’s a mouse.))
19	G5:	[mouse]
20	B3:	老師,那裡有一隻老鼠= ((tr: Teacher, there is a mouse over there.))
21	G5:	=This is a mouse.
22	T:	Oh, there is a mouse…mice…Okay.
23	G:	他說是一隻老鼠((tr: S/he said it’s a mouse.))
24 25 26 27 28 29	T: B: L: T:	Shu:: How about the prince and princess?...The prince told the cook. I want tomato for my dinner, [tomato (T shows tomato.) for my dinner]                                               [怎麼有這麼小的小孩子]((tr:(How come the kids are so small?))                                               [蕃茄] ((tr: tomato)) or it’s off with your head.
30 31	B1:	老師, 老師, 他生的小孩子怎麼都那麼小啊((tr: Teacher, teacher, why are his kids so small?))
32	B6:	唉就是小孩子就是小孩子((tr: A kid is a kid.))
33	T:	每個人都是由小時候長大的啊((tr: Every body grows up from a kid.))
34	B3:	對嘛!((tr: Yes.))
35	B4:	因為他會講英文 ((tr: Because he can speak English.))
36	B1:	太恐怖了! ((tr: It’s too terrifying.))
37	LL:	(laugh)
38 39 40 41	T:	(T smiles)How about the…princess?…The princess (T points to the picture.) told the cook (T points to the picture.). I want onion for my dinner, [onion (T shows onion.) for my dinner]
42	LL:	[(unintelligible)]
43	T:	Or it’s off with your head.
44	L:	(unintelligible)
45 46	L2:	他說如果他不聽話他就砍掉他的頭((tr: He said if he did not obey the command, he would cut off his head.))
47 48	T:	The cook told the kitchen boys…Okay?… What is kitchen? (T shows the picture of a kitchen.)
49	G:	那個餐廳=((tr: the restaurant))
50	T:	Okay? Kitchen= (T shows the picture of a kitchen.)
51	G:	=廚房((tr: kitchen))
52	T:	Okay,[this is] the [kitchen]. (T shows the picture of a kitchen.)
53	G:	[廚房]((tr: kitchen))
54	G:	[廚房]((tr: kitchen))
55 56 57	T:	He told the boys. They all want something different. (T uses a gesture.) They all want something different (T uses a gesture) or it’s off with my head.(T uses a gesture and then makes a sound.)
58	G:	(G makes a sound too.)
59	B1:	那就把他一個一個都殺掉嘛! ((tr: He can kill them one by one.)
60 61 62 63 64 65	T: B: T:	So:: He […] puzzled (T uses a gesture.) …and he pondered.(T use a             [好厲害]((tr: Cool!)) gesture.) Okay? He looked (T uses a gesture.)…and he read (T uses a gesture.)…Okay? En, Read, read, read (T takes a recipe book and pretends reading.)…And he found a perfect recipe…Yes, (T uses a gesture.) this is it. This is it.=
66	L3:	=找到了 ((tr: He found it.))

    In the second extract, the teacher at first directs the pupils’ attention by opening the big book, and giving an  announcement (line 1).  The pictures of the big book immediately draw the pupil’s attention (line 3).  While she is reading the story, she uses a lot of gestures, realia, and pictures (extralinguistic clues or nonverbal scaffolds) to help the pupils comprehend the story.  In line 6, the teacher shows the realia of ham when she reads ‘ham’ and asks ‘okay?’.  B1 responds and asks for confirmation in line 7.  The teacher, however, does not give B1 any feedback in this exchange, so the ‘okay’ here (line 6) does not seem to provide a comprehension check.  In lines 13 to 21, several pupils notice a mouse so they initiate it as a topic.  B3 first initiates the informative move (line 13), B2 follows (line 16, 18) and G5 contributes in English (line 19, 21).  The teacher initially seems to ignore them, but too many pupils get involved so she finally acknowledges their contributions in line 22.  Another pupil translates the teacher’s preceding utterance to Chinese (line 23).  This sequence of utterances (lines 13 to 23) is an unplanned event but it seems to offer an opportunity for the pupils to link the picture of ‘mouse’ with its English name (provided by the teacher and G5).  It shows that the picture of the storybook stimulates the pupils to initiate a topic.  In the sequence of utterances from line 30 to 37, we witness a pupil-initiated discussion again driven by a picture (the prince and the princess).  In addition, the teacher is observed to carefully maintain the direction of pupils’ attention (scaffolding function 3) with questions (line 24, 38) when their discussion deviates from the topic.  In line 48, the teacher checks for comprehension to see if the pupils know ‘kitchen’.  She then confirms the pupil’s answer by showing the picture (line 52).  Other contributions of the pupils to the discourse can be identified as making a sound effect (line 58), providing translation according to their understanding (line 28, 45, 66), and expressing their opinions about the characters (line 59, 61). 

Extract 3

1 2	T:	Then he mopped… his brow. (T uses a gesture to show tiredness.) And said…I hope they all like it=
3	G:	=拿刀子出來=((tr: She takes out the knife.))
4	T:	=Or it’s off with my head.
5	B1:	Yes, off with his head.
6	T:	Okay, we need to stop here.
7	B1:	Why?

    In extract 3, B1 uses English to express his opinion (line 5), and loudly emphasizes his disappointment (line 7).  It appears that B1 is totally immersed in the English environment the teacher has created by reading the story.  In line 5, he appropriately takes the phrase ‘off with’ from the story and alters ‘your head’ to ‘his head’.  This shows he is much engaged in listening to the story and as a result it stimulates him to express his feeling in English.  This might imply that B1 has not only processed the input semantically, but syntactically (the input has become B1’s uptake).  His involvement in this story makes it difficult for him to depart from it.  Therefore he asks ‘why’ (line 7) to show that he desires this story to continue without interruption.  However, the teacher wants the pupils to predict the dish the cook prepared for the royal family so she stops reading.  After the pupils write down their prediction, the teacher keeps reading the story (see extract 4).

Extract 4

1 2 3 4 5	T:	The cook (T points to the picture.)…told the king (T points to the picture.). Mm (T acts eating.)…I have a dish to please (T uses a gesture.). It has ham (T shows ham.)…tomato (T shows tomato.)… onion (T shows onion.)… [and]
6	B1:	[And rats]=
7 8 9 10	T:	=queen’s special cheese (T shows the picture of cheese.)… queen’s special cheese…And they said…they said… we hope we all like it…The royal family said we hope (T uses a gesture.) we all like it or it’s off  (T uses a gesture.) with your head.
11	LL:	(laugh)
12	T:	(T turns a page.)
13	LL:	Arr…(exclamation) pizza
		(9 lines are taken.)
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21	T:	Okay…and they ate the pizza to the very last bite. Okay? They all want the pizza (T points to the picture.)… In came the cook…(T acts out.) the cook came… Is it off (T uses a gesture.) with my head?……No, they all shouted… no, no, why? why? We will crown you…instead. We will crown you. (T puts a crown on B3.) Okay?
22	LL:	Arr (exclamation)

    When the teacher pauses in line 4 of the beginning of extract 4, B1 adds ‘rats’ to construct the story for fun (line 6).  This pause occurs when the teacher shows the realia of onion.  It appears to trigger the pupil to complete the sentence.  Besides non-verbal scaffolds, the teacher is shown to support the pupils by verbal scaffolds (line 15 and 17).  When the teacher reads a more complex sentence (line 14 and 16), she immediately offers an explanation (line 15) and simpler syntax (line 17) (scaffolding function 2).  At nearly the end of the story, she says ’why’ repeatedly in line 19 to boost their curiosity and maintain their motivation (scaffolding function 3).  Then she suddenly surprises the pupils by putting a crown on B3’s head (non-verbal scaffold).  By doing so, the pupils may easily associate ‘crown’ to her action.

Discussion

The analysis of these four extracts illustrates how scaffolding takes place in a story-based EFL classroom, and how this classroom discourse is jointly constructed by the teacher and pupils.  When assessing how the teacher helps the pupils comprehend the story and gets them involved in the activity, I discover a variety of teaching strategies (e.g. attention recruitment, reformulation, elaboration, challenge, praise, offering clues, modeling, indicating critical features, pauses, gesturing, repetition, explanation, first language, and indirect feedback) that provide non-verbal and verbal scaffolds in this whole-class activity.

    Before reading the story, the teacher recruits the pupils’ attention by using the cover picture of the big book, and relates it to something new to learn.  By using elicitations, the teacher makes the pupils focus their consciousness in the right direction.  Gass (1997) and van Lier (1996) emphasize the importance of this type of attention on learning (moving input to intake).  The teacher was also observed elaborating on pupils’ responses.  By expanding the pupil’s original answer, the teacher helps ensure understanding and offers richer input for the whole class.  She challenges the pupils to assess their current level of English proficiency, but reformulates her questions or supplies clues when she senses the pupils’ difficulty, so they are not overwhelmed but continue trying to reach their ZPD.  When teaching vocabulary, the teacher models the words, highlights the critical features, associates words with pictures, or explains them by gestures and sometimes first language equivalents as well.

While reading the new story, the teacher tries to fit her speech into an appropriate level for the class because it is impossible to tune into specific individual levels in a whole class setting.  The teacher is thus found to consistently use a lot of non-verbal scaffolds (e.g. gestures, action, pictures, realia, and pauses) mixed with an occasional verbal scaffold.  The verbal scaffolds she has used include repetition, explanation, and simplifying syntax structures and first language translations.  She repeats the texts or makes pauses while gesturing or acting out the plots.  It provides more opportunities and time for the pupils to process the language input.  When the pupils’ discussion deviates from the topic, the teacher directs or maintains their attention by elicitations.  Comprehension checks are also used by the teacher.  However, some of the teacher’s follow-up moves are found to be either omitted (extract 2, line 6 to 7), delayed (extract 2, line 16 to 22) during this period.  Two main reasons may account for this unusual phenomenon (teacher’s follow-up move is the distinct feature in classroom discourse).  Firstly, according to interview data, the teacher thinks presenting a story is like a kind of performance.  She prefers not to be interrupted and expects her pupils to appreciate English literature.  Secondly, we infer that her teaching responsibility has been affected due to a dual role she plays as not only teacher but also storyteller.

    From the pupils’ perspective, they appear to search for meaning from any resource available when listening to the story.  The pupils’ utterances serve different functions, which rarely seem to be found in the traditional (e.g. textbook-based) classroom.  For instance, they self-initiate to express their personal interpretation of the texts in Chinese, and comment on the characters, or details of the picture.  Stories like this truly work as a stimulus motivating the pupils to have something to say, as Wright (1995) indicated.  However, except for G5 (extract 2, line 19 and 21) and B1 (extract 3, line 5 and 7), the pupils rarely express themselves in English because they may not be competent enough to express themselves, or they do not see the need to communicate in English in the monolingual classroom (i.e., the teacher and pupils share the same first language, Chinese), which is the major difference compared to English as the first language or the multilingual classroom.  The Chinese translation for the texts provided by the pupils can be regarded as a verbal scaffold provided by the more capable peers for the other pupils to understand the story.  It also shows they do understand the story and have processed the language input at the semantic level.  Some pupils are also found to construct the story or make a sound effect.  This evidence implies the pupils are active listeners during this process. They do not passively receive the input but want to participate in the journey of reading the story with their teacher in search of fun.  We also found a high frequency of exclamation and laughter in the extracts. It displays how happy they are during this process.  No wonder that, from the interviews, many pupils describe their story-based lessons as relaxing, happy, interesting or surprising.  The pleasure they obtain from the story-based classroom may increase their motivation to learn English.

    These findings provide a window to see what happens in an EFL story-based classroom.  The teacher’s repertoire of strategies is quite varied although she has no training experience of storytelling.  The pupils are witnessed to self-initiate topics driven by the story or the big book but rarely in English.  The limitation of this study is that only a small sample of data is analyzed.  It is hard to generalize these findings to other classrooms or more experienced teachers in storytelling.  Furthermore, this project was implemented for a short term, so little is known about the long-term effects of this story-based approach.

Conclusion

From the evidence obtained from the transcription, it shows the use of stories in the EFL primary classroom establishes a happy and supportive environment with verbal and nonverbal scaffolds provided by both the teacher and peers.  It also provides opportunities for the pupils to indirectly learn a foreign language, and motivates them to become actively involved in meaning-focused communication.  In order to develop a better understanding of the impact of the story-based approach in an EFL context, there is a need to conduct longitudinal studies, and also to compare classroom discourse in different contexts.

About the author

Chen-Ying Li ( chen-ying.li@ncl.ac.uk ) is a fourth year Integrated PhD student in Educational Linguistics.  She has an MA in TESOL from Ohio State University.  She is an English lecturer in Fooyin University in Taiwan.  She has presented her papers in several conferences.  This paper is the preliminary findings of her current research.  Her research interests are EFL classroom interaction, TEFL for young learners, language teaching methodology, and second language vocabulary acquisition.

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Appendix 1: Functions, descriptions and examples of scaffolding

Function	Description	Example
1. Recruiting the learner’s interest	To make children interested in the task	T: What are they going to eat… are they going to eat very special food?
2. Reducing degrees of      freedom	To simplify the task	T: Okay…and they ate the pizza to the very last bite? Okay? They all want the pizza.
3. Maintaining direction	To keep the child on track towards completing the task	LL: (laugh) T: How about the…princess?
2. Marking critical        features	To point out the important and relevant features	T: who is the cook? Okay, with the hat, right?...a man with a hat”
5. Controlling frustration	To control the children’s frustration during the task	The teacher asks what ‘along’ means but pupils can’t get the correct answer after several tries. The teacher explains in the first language at last. T: What is along? Along the street LL: 長 ((tr: long)) T: No. B: 很長的馬路 ((tr: very long road)) T: No. B: 馬路 ((tr: road)) T: what is along? B: 很長 ((tr: very long)) T: Alo:ng B1: 人行道 (tr: footpath)) T: May I speak Chinese? LL: Yes. T: 你延著這條馬路走,叫什麼? ((tr: You walk along the street, what does it call?)) L: along= T: =along the street
6. Demonstration	To provide an idealized version of the task	The pupils repeat after the teacher. T: One more time, say <through> LL: through

Note: This table is based on the functions of scaffolding proposed by Wood et al. (1976, p.98), and

adopted Cameron’s interpretation (2001, p.8).  The examples are taken from the transcriptions

obtained from the story-based lessons in this project.  Underlined italics indicate the scaffold to achieve

the stated function.

Appendix 2: Transcription conventions

T	teacher
G:	unidentified girl
B:	unidentified boy
L:	unidentified learner
LL:	Several or all learners simultaneously
BB	Several boys simultaneously
B1: B2: etc,	identified boy
G1: G2: etc,	identified girl
[	indicates the point of overlap onset
]	indicates the point of overlap termination
=	a) turn continues below, at the next identical symbol b) if inserted at the end of one speaker’s turn and at the beginning of the next speaker’s adjacent turn, it indicates that there is no gap at all between the two turns
Yes/yah/ok/	Overlapping or simultaneous utterances by more than one learner
…	pause
e:r the:::	One or more colons indicate lengthening of the preceding sound
熊 ((tr:bear))	Non-English words are showed in traditional Chinese characters and are immediately followed by an English translation
(T shows picture)	Non-verbal actions or editor’s comments
< >	Teachers modeling form
scared	Underlining indicates speaker emphasis
The king	Bold italics indicate oral reading the texts of the story