An Investigation of the Effects of Cumulative and Concurrent Formats of Group Dynamic Assessment on the Improvement of Iranian upper-intermediate EFL Learners’ Email Writing Skills

Group dynamic assessment (G-DA) grounded in Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of mind (SCT) is proved to pave the way in capturing a group of learners’ Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (Alavi, Kaivanpanah,& Shabani, 2012). Considering individual’s or group’s Zone of Proximal Development, this procedure makesit possible to assess and improve the development of learners simultaneously (Alavi & Taheri 2014).Thisstudy examined the effect of two formats of Group Dynamic Assessment, namely, concurrent and cumulative on the improvement of EFL learners email writing performance. Subjects in this study were 45 EFL studentswho enrolled in upper-intermediate classes at Simin language institutes. They were from three differentclasses one control group, i.e., non-dynamic, and two experimental groups, i.e., dynamic. The qualitative analysis of the exchanges between the teacher (mediator) and the participants in both experimental groups indicated that the application of mediational moves was successful enough to help the participants promote their email writing skills so moving them to higher levels of ZPD. At the same time, GDA was proved to pavethe way for students to overcome their difficulties in writing emails. The quantitative analysis of comparing GDA groups and non-DA group performance on the posttest indicated that both traditional and dynamic assessment procedures had a significant effect on the improvement of student’s e-mail writing skills. Thefindings of this study may have implications for the classroom teaching and assessment. Both teachers andstudents can provide email communications based on GDA to integrate technology more effectively into both assessment and teaching of languages in order to enhance EFL learning.

Keywords:

Concurrent , Group Dynamic Assessment , Cumulative , Email writing , Mediation , Zone of Proximal Development