Promoting foreign language learners' text comprehension through dynamic assessment

Abstract EN

Integrating instructions and assessment is a revolutionary trend in Second Language Teaching (SLT) realm.

Vygotsky's Socio-Cultural Theory of mind (1986, 1998) paved the road for this integration.

Dynamic Assessment (DA) implies that assessment is not separated from instruction and they are dialectically integrated (Poehner, 2007).

In DA procedures, internalization of the Second Language (L2) skills are achieved by the virtue of a convenient mediation that uncover the learner’s learning potentials.

The current study tried to shed light on the significance of DA in promoting adult learners' ability of the foreign language text comprehension.

The subjects of the current study were 8 Iraqi MA students (7 males and 1 female with age range from 25-35 years) studying Persian as a foreign language for academic purposes.

The researcher used an interventionist DA approach following sandwich format.

The results revealed a significant progress for all the learners in reading comprehension performance after offering explicit mediation which took the form of reading comprehension strategies.

The findings indicated that DA may provide more comprehensive information about the reading comprehension ability and progress of the learners.

The findings of this study would call upon the teachers to utilize DA sessions during their routine schedules.