Dynamic assessment of ELT students' speaking skills

This dissertation offers an alternative way of testing oral skills by integrating assessment and instruction into a single unit. Improvement of oral narrations of English Language Teaching (ELT) students is the main focus of the study. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that the target group will develop their speaking abilities through `Dynamic Assessment? (DA) procedures and the `Enrichment Program?.DA is based on L.S Vygotsky?s socio-cultural theory of cognitive development. Its basic principle is that learners? cognitive development is fully understood by tracking their processes of development. Therefore, it is believed that assessments should reveal the underlying causes of learners? poor performances and actions should be taken to remediate these underlying problems to foster development. DA is also based on the notion of ZPD `Zone of Proximal Development?, which means that the assessment procedure is built on mediator-learner dialogues. This collaborative work is thought to reduce the reliability by some critics; however, in DA, it is aimed that the mediation the examiner supplies changes the focus of the assessment from learners? success or failure, but the amount and quality of mediation they require and to what extent the learners can respond to the mediation offered. DA is distinguished from other forms of assessment in that the mediator and the learners engage in the meditational and reciprocating moves, that is interactive moves, of which learning is the natural result. The learning can be monitored if the learners have internalized the knowledge through mediation, and can use this knowledge in other assessment contexts without mediation.In the light of theoretical foundations of DA, learners? test scores were not the concern of this study, but their development was attempted to be promoted. This dissertation investigated the effects of dynamic assessment on improving ELT learners? oral skills at School of Foreign Languages, Gazi University. It compared both the control and the experimental groups? results of non-dynamic assessments and dynamic assessments before and after the treatment called the enrichment program. The test type used in the assessment procedures was `Retelling Story Test? type in which learners were provided with authentic news stories and expected to narrate the event in the story.At the beginning of the study, subjects were delivered a questionnaire which aimed to obtain personal information. Then pre- non-dynamic and pre- dynamic assessments were carried out in both groups. Non-dynamic assessment (NDA) was used to evaluate learners? independent performance and DA was used to reveal the specific areas that needed further improvement. The enrichment program followed the pre test sessions, and it was only applied to the experimental group. During this program, learners were offered tasks that assisted them to overcome their problems. After the enrichment program, the initial assessments were repeated in both groups and the extent of their developments was evaluated. At the end of the whole procedure, a student evaluation form was delivered to the experimental group to get their opinions regarding the dynamic assessment procedures and the enrichment program. The statistical data were analyzed by Mann Whitney U- Test and Wilcoxon Sign Test.The results of the study indicate that interactions in the ZPD helped the mediator to understand the learners? linguistic competence and helped the learners to overcome their linguistic problems. The qualitative data obtained from the student evaluation form revealed that learners found the assessment procedure beneficial.