Reviewing Previous Learning Materials as a Scaffolding Strategy for Affective Engagement in an EFL Classroom
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33394/jollt.v14i4.21558Keywords:
Affective engagement, Scaffolding strategy, Reviewing previous materials, EFL classroom, Prior knowledge activationAbstract
Although reviewing previously learned material is a common opening routine in EFL classrooms, its role as a form of scaffolding for students' affective engagement has received little direct attention in school-level research. This case study examines that gap by describing how a review routine was implemented in a Grade 8 English classroom at an Islamic boarding school in Batam, Indonesia, and by describing participants' own accounts of confidence, interest, enthusiasm, and readiness to participate during and after the routine. Data were generated through classroom observations, a semi-structured interview with the class's English teacher, and semi-structured interviews with seven students selected because they had consistently taken part in the review activities, then analyzed using Bogdan and Biklen's code-families framework alongside Miles, Huberman, and Saldãna's procedures for data condensation, display, and conclusion drawing. The findings show that the teacher opened lessons with prompting questions, vocabulary review, and guided recall, and adjusted this support to students' differing recall speed through a practice she described as Teaching at the Right Level. Students described the routine as something that made them feel more confident and interested, and that was associated with speaking up more often in class. Because this is a single classroom examined through one round of teacher- and student-selected interviews, these patterns should be read as this case's own account of the practice rather than as proof that reviewing previous materials causes affective engagement in EFL classrooms generally.
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