THE IMPACT OF INTERACTIVE MEDIATION PHASE OF DYNAMIC ASSESSMENT ON THE EFL LEARNERS’ ACQUISITION OF INDIRECT DISCOURSE: AN INVESTIGATION OF ENGLISH REPORTED QUESTIONS

The idea of dynamic assessment, based on the view of constructivist, Vygotsky’s Zone ofProximal Development, has been applied in different areas of second language acquisition. TheZPD is the distance a child can complete a task with the assistance of an adult, and without orwith a little portion of assistant of that person. The dynamic assessment procedure is asfollowing: pretest, treatment or mediation, and a posttest. The present study aims atdemonstrating the effectiveness of the interaction mediation phase of dynamic assessment as atesting tool for the students’ development of indirect discourse, particularly reported questions,in their speech production. To homogenize the participants of the study and to find out theircurrent level of proficiency, there was a speaking proficiency test with a focus on reportedquestions by which the researcher could provide a perfect sample of the students. 30 studentswere chosen, and then equally assigned to the experimental group and the control group. Theway of assessment held in the experimental group was through the interactions mediation of DA,and the way of assessment held in the control group was through a traditional and staticassessment. Finally, there was a posttest by which the difference between the groups’performances was noticed. It was found that the experimental group taught by the interactionistmediation of dynamic assessment had a better performance on the reported questions than thecontrol group that were taught by the static way of teaching.

کلیدواژه ها:

Dynamic Assessment ، Zone of Proximal Development ، Indirect discourse ، Reportedquestions