The Effects of the Concurrent Group Dynamic Assessment on Iranian EFL Learners’Acquisition of Requests and Refusals

This study delved into the effects of the concurrent group dynamic assessment (hereafter G-DA) on Iranian EFL learners’ acquisition of requests and refusals. To this aim, two intact classes were randomly assigned to two groups; the concurrent G-DA group and non-dynamic assessment (hereafter N-DA) group. As the pre-test, a test was consisting of twenty four written discourse completion tasks (WDCTs) were administered. Afterwards, to run treatment sessions, the participants were required to complete twelve WDCTs in twelve treatment sessions. Drawing on Lantolf and Poehner (2011), the concurrent G-DA group was received fine–tuned and calibrated feedback whereas N-DA group was explicitly provided with pertinent assistance without considering their zones of the proximal development (ZPDs). Additionally, for the sake of having a more comprehensive observation, all dialogues between the teacher and pairs of students under investigation were audio-recorded while they were undertaking the concurrent G-DA in the classroom context. Finally, both groups took a parallel WDCTs test as the post-test. The results indicated that implementing concurrent G-DA rather than N-DA significantly facilitated the learners’ interlanguage pragmatic (henceforth ILP) development. Furthermore, the findings obtained from the microgenetic analysis portrayed how the students moved towards self-regulation by being mediated during concurrent G-DA processes.

کلیدواژه ها:

interlanguage pragmatic ، speech acts ، refusals ، requests ، concurrent group dynamic assessment