An Experimental Study Of Dynamic Assessment In Senior Middle School EFL Reading Class

Reading is an important channel for people to acquire knowledge and information and it occupies a significant position in senior middle school EFL reading class in China.Traditional reading teaching method focuses on the results and scores,ignoring students' reading and thinking process.Dynamic assessment(hereinafter referred to as DA)could make up for its shortcomings,integrate assessment and education,help students find problems in reading so as to provide timely teaching remedies and to promote students' potential development.This study adopted the interventionist DA mode of “pretest-dynamic intervention-posttest”,supplemented by interactionist DA mode,to carry out a tracking experimental study for a semester in a certain middle school in Fangcheng,Nanyang.Before the experiment,questionnaires and in-depth interviews were used to know students' reading difficulties and suggestions on reading teaching.Based on this,DA experimental scheme for senior middle school EFL reading class was designed.In the course of the experiment,DA interventional activities were conducted in pre-reading,collaborative reading,post-reading and extracurricular reading stages in experimental class.Through qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis after the experiment,major findings were as follows:(1)DA interventional activities could significantly improve students' awareness and frequency of using reading strategy,enhance students' Overall Reading Motivation,especially their Intrinsic Interest Motivation and Information Medium Motivation,but produce less influence upon students' reading style.(2)DA interventional activities could significantly improve students' English reading performance.(3)DA interventional activities are welcomed and supported by most students.Deep interviews suggested that collaborative reading activities during the interventional period help to enhance students' reading interest.This study confirms the feasibility and effectiveness of the DA theory in senior middle school EFL reading class,and provides the following reading implications for English teachers:(1)Teachers should provide appropriate reading materials according to students' reading ability and reading interest.(2)Teachers should guide collaborative reading in an orderly way to stimulate students' reading enthusiasm.(3)Teachers should observe closely students' responses to their interventions,making EFL reading class targeted to improve teaching effeciency.