Scaffolding the teaching and learning of grammar to build writing competency

There have been a number of grammar teaching approaches in the field of ESL/EFL. This presentation will examine and propose a new way of teaching and learning English grammar in a sequential order and at the same time develop building students’ writing competency. That is, teaching grammar from the very basic foundation and develop their understanding in a spiral development manner. After introducing the grammar item, students will be guided to write with the learnt grammar item. The very fundamental theoretical framework used for the sequential approach of teaching grammar was zone of proximal development (ZPD) and scaffolding proposed by Lev Vygotsky (1978). Based on Vygotsky’s theory, methods of educational scaffolding were introduced in the 2000s. According to the work of Hogan and Presley (1997), Lange (2002) stated that there are two steps involved in the process: (1) “development of instructional plans to lead the students from what they already know to a deep understanding of new material,” (2) “execution of the plans, wherein the instructor provides support to the students at every step of the learning process.” With the concepts of ZPD and scaffolding, a logical teaching and learning sequence plan for teachers and students had been developed and used a teaching and learning tool to learn grammar step-by-step and develop their writing competency accordingly. After the first stage of this project (grammar plan was tested in 3 local schools), interview and questionnaire results found that students’ learning motivation had been enhanced as they could see how grammar should be learnt step-by-step based on this grammar approach and target writing outcomes were achieved. Upon the completion of the project, it is hoped that this project can be further validated internationally. Copyright © 2020 SEACE.