SCAFFOLDING COLOUR CODES AND SAW APPROACH IN ESL ACADEMIC WRITING

Past researches have shown that students use visual organizers to connect content and ideas in their writing. Graphic organizers serve as scaffolds to organize ideas in essays. The use of graphic organizers facilitates chunking of information and help in learning. Colour codes act as scaffolds (templates) for writers to transfer the information from the graphic organizers into paragraphs. The whole act of scaffolding knowledge to form new knowledge provides a learning experience to the learner. This research explores yet an alternative method for writers to learn to write paragraphs using colour codes as scaffolds. This method is rooted from the concepts of Selective Attention embedding colour codes as scaffolds. Colour codes are used to focus the learners’ attention during the learning of academic writing. Modelling is used so learners can imitate the expected behaviour by the teachers. Graphic organizers are used as scaffolds for learners to write their essay. After one semester of using the techniques such as modelling, and scaffolding in the writing classroom, learners were asked to respond to a survey. 32 students participated in this action research. They responded to a questionnaire to reveal what they feel about this approach to ESL academic writing. The findings of this study reveal how students perceive learning ESL academic writing using the selective attention writing approach.