LINGUISTIC PROFICIENCY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH SCAFFOLDING: A SPANISH TEACHER’S BELIEFS AND PRACTICES IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract

In determining the implementation and execution of the classroom activities, the teacher’s beliefs plays an important role as one of the fundamental aspects of language teaching. In-depth, the beliefs also influence the learner’s competency and the achievement of learning outcomes. This research aims at observing the beliefs of a Spanish language teacher in a private language school in Australia. Data were gathered through interview and classroom observations. The interview was designed to explore the teacher’s beliefs regarding the language learning approach. Furthermore, the classroom observations were conducted through 1) complete observer observation and 2) complete participants observation. They were carried out to see to what extent the teacher implemented the beliefs into action. Pre-classroom questionnaires on the learner’s background were distributed to know the learners’ background. In the era where communicative approach becomes the axis of language teaching, this study suggests “scaffolding” as an alternative approach to language teaching. The finding indicates that some primary factors affecting the teacher to hold his beliefs are: limited classroom duration, small class size, and the condition of Spanish as a foreign language (FL) in Australia – where learning resources are limited. In the learning condition where the target language (TL) resources found to be scarce, this ‘scaffolding’ approach successfully and effectively equips learners with adequate knowledge of Spanish. Taking the ‘scaffolding’ as the major foundation to develop learners’ linguistic proficiency, this research provides insight regarding the use of ‘scaffolding’ toward language teaching and learning.