The Effect of Interventionist and Cumulative Group Dynamic Assessments on EFL Learners’ Writing Accuracy

Abstract

Group dynamic assessment grounded in Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory is believed to have the potential to provide a context for capturing a group of learners’ Zone of Proximal Development (Poehner & Lantolf, 2010). The present study was conducted to compare the effects of interventionist dynamic, cumulative group dynamic, and static assessments on the grammatical accuracy of the EFL learners’ narrative writing. The participants of the study were 75 female students studying in the third grade of high school. Employing a quasi-experimental research design, three groups of interventionist dynamic, cumulative group dynamic, and static assessments were formed. The researchers used some wordless picture-sequence prompts for narrative writings in the pre-test, treatment, and post-test sessions. After the pre-test, only the experimental groups received mediational support. All the control and experimental groups were treated the same in the pre- and post-test in a non-dynamic way (static assessment). The data obtained from both pre- and post-test were statistically analyzed by the one-way ANOVA. The results showed that cumulative group dynamic assessment had more effect on developing the EFL learners’ accuracy in writing narrative paragraphs. The findings have implications for language teachers and material developers, and syllabus designers. Keywords: Dynamic assessment, Interventionist, Cumulative group, Writing accuracy