Effective Strategies for Improving Writing Skills of Elementary English Language Learners

Scaffolding Instruction 

 

Scaffolding is a means to which teachers can build upon a student’s strengths. They 

should be contextual, social, and temporary frameworks used to support successful learning with 

a specific academic domain such as writing (Vygotsky, 1987). Scaffolding is thought of as using 

steps in a process, modeling the steps, and then giving students the opportunity to try it 

themselves. This strategy should be prepared with the mindset of gradual release after a student 

has reached a predetermined point in his writing which is, of course, controlled by the instructor. 

Baradaran, & Sarfarazi, (2011) found that students who had the opportunity to receive 

scaffolding principles outperformed the ones who did not experience scaffolding thus having a 

significant impact on the ESL students’ academic writing.  

 

Read (2010) suggests the IMSCI (Inquiry, Modeling, Shared, Collaborative, 

Independent) model for scaffolding and finds it extremely effective for second language learners. 

The first stage is inquiry, which facilitates background knowledge; the significance of which is 

as aforementioned. After activating prior knowledge, the instructor then models drafting the type 

of writing expected. Students and teacher then participate in shared writing where the students 

have significant input in the topic, sentence usage, etc. They are then given the opportunity to 

write collaboratively with one or more other students to produce one piece of writing. Having 

completed the above steps the students are then ready for independent writing, which is the 

ultimate goal of the scaffolding process.  

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This scaffolding technique can also be used in a different manner involving students 

scaffolding amongst themselves leaving the teacher as a less active participant (Gagné, & Parks, 

2013).  Students are consequently completing writing tasks that are collaborative in nature and 

facilitate the opportunity for pair or group work. Research has shown that in small groups, 

learners have more opportunities to use the second language for a range of functions than in 

teacher-led classroom activities (Storch, 2007). Furthermore, Storch (2007) suggests that pair 

work allows learners to combine their linguistic resources in order to collaboratively create new 

knowledge about language, which leads them to more successful writing experiences. Gagne and 

Parks (2013) found that using this method of small group scaffolding was, in fact, a successful 

strategy to produce the language needed to complete a writing task. English language learners as 

individuals often do not possess the vocabulary base needed to create writing pieces in the 

mainstream classroom so by scaffolding amongst themselves, students learned how to use one 

another’s strengths, rely less on the instructor, and feel more confident about writing tasks.