Comparing the Effect of Online Teacher-Scaffolding vs. Peer-Scaffolding on Iranian EFL Learners' Grammatical Achievement

Collaborative learning of grammar and grammatical understanding through collaborative technology-based scaffolding has recently become a topic of interest to many second language acquisition researchers, language educators, higher education administrators, and stakeholders. In line with this growing interest and situated within a social constructivist perspective, the present research aimed to investigate the effect of online teacher scaffolding and peer scaffolding on Iranian EFL learners' grammatical achievement. To this end, a total number of 40 Iranian EFL learners within the age range of 12-17 participated in this study. This quantitative study used t-tests to compare the relative effectiveness of the two different teaching approaches for improving students' grammatical knowledge in English. Even though the treatment was applied for only a few weeks due to practicality issues, the post-test results indicated that the technology-based peer and teacher scaffolding considerably improved Iranian EFL learners' grammatical knowledge. This research also suggested that although the instruction exerts a positive influence on learners' proficiency level, the difference between these two approaches was not statistically significant. Since scaffolding is extremely important in the process of teaching L2, educators and instructors can utilize the findings to gain a better understanding of scaffolding in online learning.