Scaffolding instruction in an EFL drama lesson: a systemic functional analysis

This paper presents analyses of an EFL drama lesson at a university in China from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to explore the managing of the complexity of learning tasks through scaffolding instruction. Based on pedagogic activity analysis and exchange structure analysis, we show that scaffolding is achieved through the strategic arrangement of classroom activities and the deployment of the multilingual discourse resource of knowledge and action. First, the evaluation of student acting and/or the elaboration based on it frequently serves to prepare the students for acting in the next learning cycle. Second, modelling and explaining acting are achieved through the teacher taking on the roles of secondary actor and primary knower in non-Task phases. Third, the teacher uses students' L1 in non-Task phases either to model alternative ways of acting or to explain motivations for particular ways of acting. The observations reported in this study have potential implications for teacher education that focuses on teaching drama in EFL programmes.