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Scaffolding in genre-based L2 writing classes: Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices

  • Loc Tan Nguyen ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Hung Phu Bui ORCID logo and Xuan Van Ha ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: January 30, 2024
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
From the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching Volume 63 Issue 2

Abstract

The facilitative role of scaffolding has been highlighted by research with empirical evidence on learners’ engagement in classroom interaction and their uptake of teacher instruction but the body of empirical research focusing on genre-based pedagogical approaches for Vietnamese learners as second language (L2) writers remains relatively limited. The present study extends this line of enquiry by investigating how five experienced EFL teachers at two Vietnamese colleges apply scaffolding strategies in genre-based L2 writing classes and how teacher professional development workshops shifted the teachers’ beliefs about such an approach to teaching EFL writing. Data were collected from 30 classroom observations (10 before and 20 after the workshops) and five individual semi-structured interviews with the teachers. A content-based approach was adopted for qualitative data analysis. Findings show that the teachers used a much wider range of scaffolding strategies, with questioning and giving feedback being the most frequently-used strategies, in their EFL writing classes compared to those observed before the workshops. The study further shows that there were remarkable changes in the teachers’ beliefs about genre-based L2 writing pedagogy and that they highly valued the potential impact of this approach on learners’ uptake in writing skills. Implications for second language writing pedagogy and teacher professional development will be discussed.

Keywords: genre-based pedagogy; L2 writing; professional development; scaffolding; teacher beliefs
Corresponding author: Loc Tan Nguyen, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, E-mail:

Funding source: Đại học Kinh tế Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh

  1. Research funding: This work was funded by University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH), Vietnam.

  2. Informed consent: The authors all consent to the publication of this article.

  3. Competing interests: The authors hereby declare that we have no conflicts of interest.

Appendix: Guiding interview questions

  1. What procedures/steps do you often follow in teaching writing to your students? What is the focus of each step? Why?

  2. How do you often prepare your students for the main writing task? Why?

  3. How do you assess your students’ submissions? How do you treat your students’ language and writing problems? Why?

  4. What is the teacher’s role in a writing class? What role do you think about interactive scaffolding plays in teaching writing? Why?

  5. Let’s talk about the modeling stage in writing classes? What do you think the teacher and students usually do at this stage? Why?

  6. Let’s talk about the joint construction stage in the writing class. What do you think the teacher and students usually do? Why?

  7. What do you think about peer assessment in a writing class? Is it effective? Why or why not?

  8. In your opinion, is genre-based pedagogy an effective approach to teaching writing? Why or why not?

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Received: 2023-06-08
Accepted: 2023-12-29
Published Online: 2024-01-30
Published in Print: 2025-06-26

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Unpacking the positioning of being “disengaged” and “disrespectful” in class through nexus analysis: an international student’s navigation of institutional and interactional university norms
  4. Assessing English language learners’ collocation knowledge: a systematic review of receptive and productive measurements
  5. The role of awareness in implicit and explicit knowledge
  6. Intensity of CLIL exposure and L2 motivation in primary school: evidence from Spanish EFL learners in non-CLIL, low-CLIL and high-CLIL programmes
  7. Promoting young EFL learners’ oral production through storytelling: coursebook adaptation in the Vietnamese classroom
  8. Applying embodied meaning of spatial prepositions and the Principled Polysemy model to teaching English as a second language: the case of to and on
  9. The impact of guessing and retrieval strategies for learning phrasal verbs
  10. Unraveling the differential effects of task rehearsal and task repetition on L2 task performance: the mediating role of task modality
  11. Examining L2 studentsʼ development of global cohesion and its relationship with their argumentative essay quality
  12. The construct of integrated group discussion (IGD) among undergraduate students: to what extent does group discussion performance reflect performance on IGD tasks?
  13. Discipline-specific attitudinal differences of EMI students towards translanguaging
  14. Relationship between second language vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary learning strategy use: a meta-analysis of correlational studies
  15. Evaluative language in undergraduate academic writing: expressions of attitude as sources of text effectiveness in English as a Foreign Language
  16. Investigating optimal spacing schedules for incidental acquisition of L2 collocations
  17. The association between socioeconomic status and Chinese secondary students’ English achievement: mediation of self-efficacy and moderation of gender
  18. Integrated instruction of Appraisal Theory and rhetorical moves in literature reviews: an exploratory study
  19. Scaffolding in genre-based L2 writing classes: Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices
  20. Exploring the professional role identities of English for academic purposes practitioners: a qualitative study
  21. The combined effects of task repetition and post-task teacher-corrected transcribing on complexity, accuracy and fluency of L2 oral performance
  22. Teacher behaviour and student engagement with L2 writing feedback: a case study
  23. The effect of an intervention focused on academic language on CAF measures in the multilingual writing of secondary students
  24. Which approach best promoted low-proficiency learners’ listening performance: metacognitive, bottom-up or a combination of both?
  25. Enhancing young EFL learners’ written skills: the role of repeated pre-task planning
  26. The mediating roles of resilience and motivation in the relationship between students’ English learning burnout and engagement: a conservation-of-resources perspective
  27. Student and teacher beliefs about oral corrective feedback in junior secondary English classrooms
  28. The effects of context, story-type, and language proficiency on EFL word learning and retention from reading
https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2023-0125
Keywords for this article
genre-based pedagogy; L2 writing; professional development; scaffolding; teacher beliefs

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Unpacking the positioning of being “disengaged” and “disrespectful” in class through nexus analysis: an international student’s navigation of institutional and interactional university norms
  4. Assessing English language learners’ collocation knowledge: a systematic review of receptive and productive measurements
  5. The role of awareness in implicit and explicit knowledge
  6. Intensity of CLIL exposure and L2 motivation in primary school: evidence from Spanish EFL learners in non-CLIL, low-CLIL and high-CLIL programmes
  7. Promoting young EFL learners’ oral production through storytelling: coursebook adaptation in the Vietnamese classroom
  8. Applying embodied meaning of spatial prepositions and the Principled Polysemy model to teaching English as a second language: the case of to and on
  9. The impact of guessing and retrieval strategies for learning phrasal verbs
  10. Unraveling the differential effects of task rehearsal and task repetition on L2 task performance: the mediating role of task modality
  11. Examining L2 studentsʼ development of global cohesion and its relationship with their argumentative essay quality
  12. The construct of integrated group discussion (IGD) among undergraduate students: to what extent does group discussion performance reflect performance on IGD tasks?
  13. Discipline-specific attitudinal differences of EMI students towards translanguaging
  14. Relationship between second language vocabulary knowledge and vocabulary learning strategy use: a meta-analysis of correlational studies
  15. Evaluative language in undergraduate academic writing: expressions of attitude as sources of text effectiveness in English as a Foreign Language
  16. Investigating optimal spacing schedules for incidental acquisition of L2 collocations
  17. The association between socioeconomic status and Chinese secondary students’ English achievement: mediation of self-efficacy and moderation of gender
  18. Integrated instruction of Appraisal Theory and rhetorical moves in literature reviews: an exploratory study
  19. Scaffolding in genre-based L2 writing classes: Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices
  20. Exploring the professional role identities of English for academic purposes practitioners: a qualitative study
  21. The combined effects of task repetition and post-task teacher-corrected transcribing on complexity, accuracy and fluency of L2 oral performance
  22. Teacher behaviour and student engagement with L2 writing feedback: a case study
  23. The effect of an intervention focused on academic language on CAF measures in the multilingual writing of secondary students
  24. Which approach best promoted low-proficiency learners’ listening performance: metacognitive, bottom-up or a combination of both?
  25. Enhancing young EFL learners’ written skills: the role of repeated pre-task planning
  26. The mediating roles of resilience and motivation in the relationship between students’ English learning burnout and engagement: a conservation-of-resources perspective
  27. Student and teacher beliefs about oral corrective feedback in junior secondary English classrooms
  28. The effects of context, story-type, and language proficiency on EFL word learning and retention from reading
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