ZPD in CALL and Symmetrical Scaffolding in Pair-working: Moving from Traditional Trends toward Alternative Approaches

This study has investigated the effectiveness of alternative approaches in teaching linguistic features to the foreign language learners by applying Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Distance (ZPD) in teacher-fronted method, pair-working and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) approaches and their results were compared and analysed to see their effectiveness, if any. The current paper examined teaching of prepositions _ one of the most controversial features in of English_ according to these three methods/ approaches. For this end, three groups of the subjects at intermediate level were selected and taught according to three different methods/ approaches so as to illuminate which of the used methods/ approaches was more effective. The one-way ANOVA was run for calculating the results. The results of the paper suggest that the conflation of the proposed methods/ approaches improve the learning outcome.