Dr. Mahboubeh Taghizadeh (Iran University of Science and Technology) & Maryam Naji (Alborz University), Iran
This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of dynamic assessment on students’ mastery of ten categories of discourse marker (i.e., code gloss, contrast, cause and effect, transition, sequencing, sum up, addition, validity, attitude, and giving example) enhanced through two types of instruction. Seventy female undergraduate students at the Iran University of Science and Technology participated in this study. In order to make assessment and instruction as the inseparable components, a scoring scheme was developed by the researchers in which four types of implicit/explicit mediation made available to the learners during the process of assessment. The results of the study suggested that (1) dynamic assessment of discourse markers had positive effect on the learners’ internalization of discourse markers as there was a significant difference in the participants’ performance on the pre/posttests; (2) learners who were guided by an instructor performed better in the posttest of discourse markers than those who received feedback from their peers; (3) the learners had different zones of proximal development regarding noticing and developing the discourse markers; (4) both teacher and peer mediation in the form of explicit feedback was the most effective compared to other hints in the dynamic assessment procedure. The findings of this study also revealed that those who received feedback from their instructor better internalized sequencing, addition, and contrast markers, respectively, whereas those who received feedback from their peers were good at internalizing addition, code gloss, and sequencing markers, respectively.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The International Conference on Current Issues of Languages, Dialects and Linguistics (WWW.TLLL.IR), 2-3 February 2017, Ahwaz.
