Aakash Kumar & Dr. Hassan Syed
Sukkur Institute of Business Administration (IBA) University, Pakistan
Writing is considered as the most difficult and painstaking process as it requires ESL learners to think, generate and organize the ideas altogether (Richards and Renandya 2002). One of the reasons behind these difficulties, is the way writing is assessed (Richards 2015). The writing skills of students are assessed through static assessment whereby students do not get constructive feedback to improve but grades and stars on their writings. Hence, the students securing low score on traditional assessment, become less able in dealing with writing difficulties on their own (Hidri 2019). Giving solution to aforementioned problem, Miao and Mian (2013), claimed that Dynamic Assessment (DA) helps to understand the poor performance of such students and it assists students to cope up with their difficulties under the guidance of teachers. Moreover, Lidz and Gindis (2003) describe that, DA considers teaching for assessment and assessment for teaching. This integration represents a significant departure from traditional assessment procedures, summative and formative that focus on product and see it as ultimate performance of a learner. However, DA is concerned with process of learning by indicating the existing level of abilities of a learner and it suggests the ways to promote them to higher levels of functioning (Mauludin 2018). Having seen the limitations of existing assessment practices, the current study aims to improve ESL learners’ essay writing skills through DA. This study is in progress research work which will be the ground breaking study in the classroom context in Pakistan. It aims to employ an experimental design using the framework of zone of proximal (ZPD) development and mediated learning experience (MLE). The researcher aims to collect data by mix method approach. The quantitative data will show the effect of DA on writing skills whereas the qualitative data will present the students attitudes towards DA.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Fourth Annual International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2020, Ahwaz.
