The Effect of Dynamic Assessment on General English test’s Performances of Iranian Medical Students

Abstract

As the need for appropriate alternative assessment techniques for general English students seems to be both obvious and critical, the researchers tried to put dynamic assessment (DA) theoretical principles into practice with Iranian medical students. The study’s initial subjects were 58 freshmen at Paramedical Faculty of Gerash one of the branches of Shiraz University of Medical Science (SUMS) who were at the second semester of their university education and asked to participate in a general English test based on their course books. Seventeen participants out of fifty eight received less than half of the total mark and became the real subjects of the study. Inspired by DA mediational techniques, they were interviewed individually and provided with some guidelines, advices, and test performing techniques by the teacher/researcher. As the interviews were finished the subjects were asked to take the previous exam again after fifty days (the optimal temporal distance in which the extraneous factors such as test witness, practice effect, and cognitive maturation affect the study’s performances minimally). With the aid of a paired-samples t-test it was revealed that subjects performed remarkably better on the second administration after being interviewed by the teacher/researcher about their performance problems. The study’s general findings implied that teacher’s mediation (derived from Vygotsky’s “dialogue of unequals”) within students’ zones of proximal development (ZPD) can miraculously pave the way for teachers, students, and material developers to reach to the ultimate “aim” of all instructional courses which is students “learning”.