Dynamic Assessment in L2 Writing Performance: the Case of Iranian EFL Learners

Dynamic assessment (DA) is founded in Sociocultural Theory (SCT) of Vygotsky (1978) and his conception of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). It motivated the scholars to find a way from a static approach of assessment to the dynamic approach to increase individuals’ independence and level of performance (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004; Poehner, 2008). To this end, this investigation probed DA intervention on writing fluency and complexity of Iranian EFL learners. Before the treatment, the KET test was implemented for homogenizing the participants and then 36 learners were chosen in groups of namely, experimental and control (18 participants in every group). In both groups, learners wrote a one-paragraph essay in the first session. During the intervention which lasted for two sessions, the researcher followed some stages including implicit and explicit feedback types in the second and third sessions to help learners move from teacher-regulation to self-regulation and then they wrote again a one-paragraph essay as the post-test in the fourth session. Participants in the control group wrote on the same topics as the experimental group, however, with no DA intervention. The researcher corrected their papers and provided some general comments in the control group. The t-tests in the post-tests indicated that experimental group surpassed the control group considerably concerning the writing fluency and complexity improvement. The paper concludes with a discussion and recommendations for further research into the potential DA contributions to EFL writing assessment and instruction.