Impact of Dynamic Assessment on Iranian EFL Learners' Picture-cued Writing

Abstract

Abstract In Iran, most English teachers' method of teaching writing is merely to have students do some writing exercises or simply to give them writing tests without any instruction, but writing is not an easy task for students, and teachers should be able to do more to facilitate their students' writing. One of the ways to aid writing is dynamic assessment via graduated prompt. The graduated prompting procedure provides intervention in the form of predetermined standardized prompts that are sequenced from general to more specific. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of DA on the improvement of Iranian intermediate EFL learners' picture-cued writing tasks. The study was conducted with 35 Iranian EFL learners (male and female) who were randomly selected from an available population pool of 70 EFL learners enrolled in two language institutes in Esfahan, Iran. The data were collected via a pretest, a posttest and a questionnaire. The analysis of the test scores through t-test revealed that the experimental group did statistically better in the test. Furthermore, almost all of the participants held positive attitudes toward writing, and their confidence in their own English writing ability increased. The implication of the study is that dynamic assessment via graduated prompt can be incorporated into the regular writing program.