Scaffolding and web concordancers as support for language learning

Abstract

The present study investigates the effects of scaffolding and web concordancers on students' proofreading performance. The study addresses the following research questions: (1) How does a concordancer search enhance students' proofreading performance? (2) How does scaffolding for concordancer searches enhance students' proofreading performance? (3) Does scaffolding have a lasting effect on students' concordance-assisted proofreading performance? (4) Does scaffolding affect students' level of certainty about their proofreading performance? (5) What are the students' perceptions of the effects of the web concordancer and scaffolding? A class of 26 senior high school students in Taiwan participated in this study. The results of the present study showed significant improvement in students' proofreading performance with the support of concordancer searches. Proofreading scores of the scaffolding group were significantly higher than the scores of the non-scaffolding group, and this improvement appeared to remain after the removal of scaffolding. Moreover, the prompts boosted the students' level of certainty about their performance in proofreading tasks. As for the results of the study's questionnaire survey, the students' responses suggested an overall favorable perception.