Group Dynamic Assessment Of Grammar Development Of Chinese Middle-school EFL Learners

Dynamic assessment(DA),grounded in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory(SCT),which has unified assessing and teaching into a seamless whole,provides a new approach to middle school EFL assessment and teaching.Original DA was in the format of one examiner to one examinee,which might be unrealistic in EFL settings.And the attempt of small group dynamic assessment(G-DA)might shed some light on EFL pedagogical practices in a larger classroom setting.The present study was aimed at investigating whether G-DA could promote Chinese middle school EFL learners’ grammar development and diagnose their development levels,and what’s their obstacles in learning the three target grammar points,including the present perfect tense,the object clause,and the relative clause.The study recruited six Chinese middle school EFL learners at Grade Nine as participants,and grouped two participants who had similar performances in a static pretest into a small group.In six weeks,they went through five G-DA sessions and one NDA session.In G-DA sessions,they were asked to firstly do Chinese-to-English sentence translations containing target grammar points independently,then there was an interactive mediated error correction process centering around target grammar points.From G-DA1 to G-DA5,three indices were used to assess learners’development and diagnose their development levels:firstly,participants’ independent static scores;secondly,the number and type of mediations required by the participants to arrive at the correct grammar expression;thirdly,participants’ reactions towards mediations given by the author in the interactive mediated error correct process.Results have indicated that G-DA is effective in promoting Chinese middle school EFL learners’ grammar development.For the interference of delayed time in G-DA5,participants’ independent static scores decreased compared with G-DA4,and more mediations were required.But in general,their independent static scores were increasing;the number of mediations needed were decreasing;and the mediations needed were becoming less implicitWhen the participants showed similar independent translation performances,G-DA could successfully diagnose the developmental differences.In these circumstances,the participants who need fewer mediations and fewer explicit mediations to arrive at the correct grammar expressions were in a higher development level than the other participants,and the participants who could provide peer mediations were also in a higher development level than other participants.Besides,G-DA has revealed the participants’ some development obstacles as to the three target grammar points.On the one hand,the effectiveness of G-DA in promoting middle school EFL learners’ grammar development and diagnosing their development levels might provide some implications to Chinese middle school EFL pedagogical practices;on the other hand,the grammar development obstacles as revealed by G-DA might provide some reference to Chinese middle school EFL teachers in their future grammar instructions.