Instructional Scaffolding, Socioeconomic Status and Oral Performance: A Case of Iranian Preschoolers

This study focused on the analysis of instructional scaffolding and socioeconomic status (SES) on the articulation of English utterances in Iranian preschoolers' English classes. For garnering the relevant corpora, two kindergartens from both High and Low SESs were randomly selected. They were then scrutinized based on preschoolers' portfolio and two classes from each kindergarten were selected as experimental and control groups respectively. During the course of studies, preschoolers in experimental groups were exposed to instructional scaffolding techniques while the presence of such a treatment for control groups was limited to textbook. As such, at the end of the course, preschoolers' English oral performances in each SES strata were compared by administrating only a post-test. The results indicated that scaffolding techniques regardless of their usage in high or low socioeconomic levels had a dramatic effect on preschoolers' performance. All in all, the application of scaffolding tools may pave the way for teachers who are involved in teaching children and also the researchers in such areas.