Scaffolding strategy to enhance reading sub-skills among young-adult learners

Abstract

The notion of scaffolding is widely used in education, where the real protagonist of the whole process is the learner. The teacher’s role, then, becomes more of that of a facilitator. The main objective of the present study was to improve the reading sub-skills of second semester students at the Quevedo State Technical University. The methodology used was semi-structured interviews and expert judgments. The results indicated that it is important that the teacher be familiar with the students’ competence and knowledge to know how to best help them, and what is most appropriate for their progress and pace of learning. To determine this, students should participate in different activities. In addition, it is essential that the university's language center promote ongoing training so that instructors can update their knowledge by taking professional training courses. Lastly, the approach of this research is purely qualitative since it is based on students' perceptions of which scaffolding strategies they believed were most useful to understand the readings.