A Study On Dynamic Assessment In The Mongolian Junior Middle School English Writing Class

Dynamic assessment as a systematic assessment theory originates from the works of the former Soviet Union Psychologist Lev Vygotsky(1978, 1998) and Israel’s Psychologist Reuven Feuerstein(1990). Both consider mediation is an important method to facilitate people’s cognitive development. In the process of dynamic assessment, instruction and assessment have achieved dialectical unity, so the teaching method is beneficial to diagnose students’ problems in learning and to help teachers understand students’ learning status, so that teachers can choose proper instructional mediation to promote students’ Zone of Proximal Development effectively(Campione & Brown, 1987). Assessment is a measurement of students’ present knowledge, which can not reveal students’ learning potential. Examiners should provide mediation assistance during assessment to facilitate students’ development with capturing learning potential. There is a big difference between child who could do with assistance and child who could do alone(Campione & Brown, 1987; Vygotsky, 1978). Dynamic assessment, as a combination of instruction and assessment, seeks to promote students’ development with capturing learning potential(Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002). Dynamic assessment can strengthen instruction and assessment concurrently in language learning curriculum. It has begun to be studied in empirical application of foreign language teaching recently.Some researchers implemented dynamic assessment in foreign language teaching, but most of the former studies focused on university students. Under the background of curriculum reform of minority nationality basic education in the countryside, the present study conducts comparative study between dynamic assessment and traditional assessment on Mongolian junior middle school English writing class to answer the following research questions:(1) What about the English writing learning situation of the Mongolian junior middle school students before the experiment?(2) What are the possible problems the students of experiment group are faced during the dynamic assessment? And why?(3) How about the feedback of students about dynamic assessment?(4) What is the influence of dynamic assessment on students’ English writing ability?To aim at English writing classroom teaching of Mongolian junior middle school in rural areas, this study selected 72 students from two parallel classes of Grade One in Shebotu Mongolian junior middle school, who were divided into experiment class and control class, then conducted dynamic assessment and traditional assessment respectively for one semester. This study adopted CIPP curriculum assessment model. In the CIPP assessment process, first, the researcher investigated English writing teaching situation of participants through questionnaire and pre-test, and then constructed a systematic dynamic assessment mediation strategies model based on the teaching situation and the former research outcomes, and adopted pre-test —non-standard mediation—post-test format interactionist dynamic assessment(Lantolf & Poehner, 2004) to conduct empirical research in experiment class. In the whole experiment process, the qualitative data and quantitative data were collected through questionnaires, pre-test, post-test, observation of students’ task completion and classroom observation to answer the above research questions. The quantitative data from pre-test and post-test of two classes were analyzed by SPSS 20.0. The major research findings are as follows:(1) About the English writing situation of the Mongolian junior middle school, the results of the pre-test and Questionnaire One show that: most of the students’ English writing ability is low; their English writing teaching is ignored by their English teachers; most students lack daily English writing exercises; most of them are not interested in English writing; the majority of students consider that English writing is the most difficult, compared with listening, speaking and reading. The ultimate objective of the English curriculum is to cultivate students’ comprehensive English application ability. English writing as a language application ability needs to be shown more emphasis on in English teaching. For this circumstance, dynamic assessment is the most appropriate teaching method for their English writing class.(2) At the beginning of the experiment, the task completion of experiment students and the result of Questionnaire Two indicate that the major problems of the experiment students faced are that they hold psychological resistance to process approach and they have a low capability in composition revision and cooperative learning. Due to these problems, their completion of the second draft, the final draft and peer-assessment is far from ideal. The main reasons for the problems are that they are beginners of English, and the traditional English writing teaching attaches little importance to those abilities.(3) In the mid-stage of the experiment, classroom observation and the result of Questionnaire Three both indicate that most of the experiment students have a high recognition for instructional mediation strategies in dynamic assessment. In general, the dynamic assessment has a high feasibility in the Mongolian junior English writing class, although there are some problems during the experiment.(4) After the experiment, the analyses of the pre-test and post-test reveal that dynamic assessment is more effective than traditional assessment on facilitating students’ English writing ability. Experiment students make significant progress in subjective language ability. The result of the Questionnaire Four indicates most of the experiment students’ English writing interest and ability are improved. Meanwhile, the process approach gains high recognition among the students through the experiment.Based on the above research findings, theoretically speaking, the present research further facilitates the development of dynamic assessment theory in junior middle school English writing teaching, and it also provides a new systematic scientific instructional theory for basic education curriculum reform. Practically speaking, the present research explores the performance of students in Mongolian junior middle school of rural areas in dynamic assessment, which provides practical experience for application of dynamic assessment in junior middle school English writing class in the countryside. Meanwhile, the present research enlightens the further empirical research of dynamic assessment in minority basic education in China.