[MUSIC] Welcome back to Teach English Now. So far you have been introduced to the concepts of body language and teacher talk, and their importance in helping you communicate with students, make meaning clear, and by so doing, help them to learn language. In this video we are going to talk about scaffolding. The term scaffolding comes from the platforms workers use when constructing a building. Like those scaffolds, which provide a place for the workers to stand before the building is in place, teachers can provide guides and structures to help learners comprehend difficult concepts more quickly. The basic idea of scaffolding is to create opportunities for students to learn step by step, building upon tasks that will allow them to combine those basic concepts together to perform more difficult tasks. So, how do you scaffold? Well, one of the key scaffolding principles in language learning is the idea that for a student to understand new and particularly complex tasks, you first have to model behavior. Guide students through different parts of a behavior by practice, and then have the students perform the complex behavior on their own. Let us show you an example of how this might work in language learning. First, model the behavior. Let's say that I have advanced students who are ready to learn how to use the passive voice. It is a pretty tricky advanced skill, so one of the best ways to teach this is to scaffold it. Generally, I will begin by showing examples of the passive voice, often in real context, and have learners get a sense of it. In order to better model the behavior, I would also break the process into steps, and show those steps to my students. For example, I might show learners how you take an object from an active sentence and make it the subject, which is the first step. Then for the second step I might ask them to add the be verb. I would also probably only focus on present tense because using a lot of different tenses might confuse the students initially. And then finally, I might tell them to add the past participle after the main verb in the active sentence. I might also show them an optional fourth step which is adding the subject of the active sentence using the by phrase. Now that I have modeled the behavior and shown the steps to the students, they are ready to move to the second part of scaffolding, which is practice in a guided or controlled fashion. I usually try to provide clear instructions and sample sentences to have students create passive voice. Once again, performing each step within the process. First, I will have students find the object. Then, they will add the be verb. And finally, I'll instruct them to add a past participle. After having done a guided practice, you are finally ready to have students attempt an independent task. However, often this is an imperfect art. Sometimes if I see students struggling, I may start from the beginning yet again by looking at readings with passive voice, or maybe I will have them continue to do more advanced guided practices with me. Perhaps I will have students write sentences on their own and share those sentences with a partner. Scaffolding is not unidirectional. It is more recursive, a word that means I will go back and forth and do it again and again. Breaking it down for students and then giving them time to practice until they are comfortable with it independently. Model, guided practice, independent practice, model, guided practice, independent practice, repeat. I think that you will agree that by putting all three techniques together, using body language, teacher talk, and scaffolding, that there is a performance aspect to teaching language. A way to reach a learner through a deliberate use of body, voice and message. In this way, I think it is appropriate to say that, for a message to be clear, understood and enjoyable, for language to be cake, a teacher must be, at least in part, an actor. Thanks for watching. [MUSIC]