Humanizing L2 Instruction: ZPD Progression of L2 Learners’Writing Development in Transcendence Tasks

Dynamic Assessment (DA) which stems from Vygotsky’spsychological thinking challenges a dualistic view on teaching andassessment, contending that the two should be conceived as a unifiedactivity. The present study reports the results of DA-based instructionof L2 writing proficiency in transcendence tasks. Vygotsky’s (1978)notion of the Zone of Proximal Development and Poehner’s (2009)concept of transcendence (TR) served as the theoretical bases for theconstruction of the assessment procedures. The design included apretest, mediated learning phase, a post test and two TR tasks with theparticipation of the two groups who were randomly selected followingan OPT test. The experimental group received a DA-based instruction(i.e. aided instruction such as prompting, cueing, explaining andmediating within the assessment) for eight sessions while the controlgroup received a non-interactive writing instruction. After eightsessions, both groups were post tested and underwent a static and adynamic assessment. The pre-post tests were assessed by three raters toensure the reliability of the test scores. The qualitative results indicatedthe outperformance of the experimental group over the control group.After two weeks, the experimental group undertook two transcendencetasks (a near task and a near far task) (Alexander, 1973) in order totrace their growing proficiency in more difficult and increasinginnovative tasks (Feuerstein, Rand, & Rynders 1988). Moreover uponanalyzing the protocols, an inventory of meditational moves wasdetected a posterior. On implication side, the study suggests the use ofDA as a development-oriented procedure to diagnose and develop thelearners’ emerging abilities

Keywords:

Dynamic Assessment , ZPD , Mediation , Writing proficiency , Sociocultural theory , Vygotsky and Transcendence