Enhancing Students’ Communicative Competence through Scaffolding Technique

The students often got confused and were forced into silent when they communicated in English. This situation hadcaused poor in English communicative competence,which then lead to serious problemin the teaching-learning process.  The application of scaffolding technique in English as a foreign language (EFL) learningmight be the ideal solution; it had some principles that could improve the students’ communicative competence. This research is aimed at finding out the effect of the implementingScaffolding Technique towards the students’ communicative competence. Participants were 50 (35males and 29females) second semester students enrolled in a second-year diploma program in Tourism Business Management, State Polytechnic of Bali in 2018/2019 academic year. The students in the experimental group were given communicative activities such as brainstorming, business games, simulation, WebQuest, problem-solving, which were carefully designed to necessitate the implementation of the scaffolding technique. The students in the control group were taught by thedeductive method of the lesson book. Data was collected through the procedure of planning, action, observation, and reflection. Results from the pretest–posttest control group design were evaluated by paired t-tests in order to identify any statistically significant improvements following the intervention. Meanwhile, qualitative data was analyzed based on the whole observation of the action and the result of the questionnaires. Findings revealed that the students participating in the treatment were significantly improved in terms of English communicative competence, and the improvement was also supported by their increased learning motivation and interest.