The Effect of Interventionist Classroom vs. MALL Dynamic Assessment on EFL Learners' Vocabulary Learning

At the level of research, assessment and instruction have evolved/developed as separate specializations with their own conventions and techniques, e.g., expert diaries and gatherings (Pohner, 2005). One of the areas which recently has been advancing more dynamically in applied linguistics is Mobile...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Amir Marzban, Fatemeh Nafarzadehnafari
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: KARE Publishing 2018-12-01
Series:Applied Linguistics Research Journal
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.journalagent.com/z4/download_fulltext.asp?pdir=alrj&un=ALRJ-36844
Description
Summary:At the level of research, assessment and instruction have evolved/developed as separate specializations with their own conventions and techniques, e.g., expert diaries and gatherings (Pohner, 2005). One of the areas which recently has been advancing more dynamically in applied linguistics is Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Therefore, the present study tried to merge these two important issues by exploring the effect of interventionist classroom dynamic assessment and MALL on EFL learners' vocabulary learning. For this purpose, initially, a PET (2015) was administered to 130 EFL students, and 90 learners whose scores were between one standard deviation above and below the mean score were selected. In addition, a vocabulary knowledge test was administered as a pre-test to check students' vocabulary knowledge. The participants were then divided into two experimental and one control groups, each experimental group received treatment in a specific type of classroom setting and MALL. In the control group, the participants learnt 40 lexical items/words in a traditional manner, whereas in the classroom dynamic assessment (DA) and MALL dynamic assessment groups, the participants received DA strategies feedback on three vocabulary tests throughout the semester; however, the way they were treated in these two groups varied. After the treatment, VKS was administered as the posttest. The results of a repeated-measures two-way ANOVA showed that there was a significant improvement in all the three groups. More specifically, the findings showed that although the classroom dynamic assessment group outperformed the other two groups in the posttest, the difference was significant only between the classroom dynamic assessment and control group. Conclusions and pedagogical implications are discussed.
ISSN:2651-2629