چكيده
The present study mainly tried to explore the willingness to communicate of students by using direction maintenance and reduction in the degrees of freedom as the scaffolding techniques in order to support and guide the learners in speaking within Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. To this end,130 female EFL learners who were learning English at one of the branches of Arad language institutes in Mahabad (Iran) were administrated Nelson test and based on its results, 104 homogenized EFL learners within the age range of 14-19 were selected as the sample of the study and they were categorized into three groups of direction maintenance group, reduction in the degrees of freedom group and control group. The participants filled out the WTC questionnaire. Furthermore, WTC observation sheet was used by teachers as pre-test and post-test in WTC. The results of ANOVA and Scheffe’s Post-Hoc comparisons showed that even though both direction of maintenance and reduction in the degrees of freedom outperformed to control group in WTC rate after treatment, but based on the mean comparisons, reduction in the degrees of freedom while speaking outperformed direction of maintenance and control group in WTC. The study has implications for teachers and learners in using different strategies of scaffolding especially reduction in the degrees of freedom strategy.
