The Differential Impact of Focused and Unfocused Oral Scaffolds on EFL Learner's Cognitive Knowledge and Cognitive Regulation

This study investigated the impact of orally presented scaffolds on cognitive knowledge and cognitive regulation among a cohort of female Iranian learners of English.Six intact groups of learners were assigned to five experimental conditions and a control group. All groups were tested on their cognitive knowledge and cognitive regulation through a pretest and two posttests. The results of the statistical analyses (one-way and repeated measures ANOVAs) showed that the participants who had received scaffolds significantly outperformed the control group on the posttests. The results also revealed that unfocused scaffolds functioned more efficiently in promoting the learners'' metacognition, particularly regulation of cognition. The study also found that focused metacognitive scaffolds, when compared to other types of focused scaffolds, were more effective in improving the learners'' metacognition.