English instruction in junior high school in Indonesia is not like what has been expected by the national curriculum. It can been seen from the level of students competency in speaking English. The students are still difficult to communicate well in using English in communication. One thing that cause this is the orientation of English instruction. Teachers commonly teach English in order that students can answer questions in national examination. So that we often find students with high score in national examination but less competency in expressing spoken English.
To achieve the level of literacy like what the curriculum expects, the role of teachers here are very important. Teacher’s talk is crucial importance not only for the organization of the classroom but also for the processes of the acquisition. Because of the importance of teacher’s talk, It is possible for second language learners to develop deep disciplinary knowledge and engage in challenging academic activities if teachers know how to support them pedagogically to achieve their potential. There are a number of ways in which teachers can assist students in developing language and subject matter knowledge from the interactive, socio-cultural perspective sketched here. One such way that teachers can use to make students participate actively in their own and each other academic development is scaffolding. The basis of scaffolding is social interaction. Learning is a process of apprenticeship and internalization in which skills and knowledge are transformed from the social into the cognitive plane.
This study is a descriptive study on teachers’ scaffolding talks in classroom interaction. It is qualitative study with three English teachers at MTs NegeriWirosari who teach the seventh grade up to the eightgrade. The data of this study were taken from spoken interaction in classroom context between teachers and students. Each teacher was recorded once.
The data were analyzed qualitatively through several stages, that is (1) data transcription, (2) data classification, (3) data analysis to find types of scaffolding talks performed, the linguistic features characterizing the scaffolding talks and speech functions used by the teacher, and (4) data interpretations.
The first result shows that Clarifying students understanding is very dominant in all data analysis. Teachers generally use questions to clarify students’ understanding. In other words, the teachers have tendency to ask question more than others technique. Meanwhile, the least type of scaffolding talk used by teachers is offering explanation. Moreover, certain teacher didn’t use this type of scaffolding talk.
The Linguistic features characterizing teachers’ scaffolding talk realized in mood. The mood types characterizing the teachers’ scaffolding talks are indicative consisting of declaratives and interrogatives. Interrogatives comprise wh-question and yes/no-questions and the last one is imperatives. Wh-questions have the most. The least of teacher B and teacher C is imperatives, but teacher A is declaratives.
The speech functions are also realized in the teachers’ scaffolding talks. In this study, the speech functions performed by the teachers in teachers’ scaffolding talks are statements, questions and commands. Offer is only one from others.
The most widely used of the speech functions are questions. The teachers use question to clarify understanding and to invite student participant. The questions are often used by the teachers to ask the students to take part in the lesson. Teaching learning activities are often with teachers asking a questions, receiving students response, asking a question of a new student, and so forth.