Gender-based Study of Learners' Reading Ability Through Dynamic Assessment (DA): Guthke's Lerntest approach in focus

Subject Areas :

Zohreh  Jarrahzadeh ¹ (Department of English, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Isfahan, Iran)
Omid  Tabatabaei ² (Department of English, Najafabad Branch, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad, Isfahan, Iran)

Received: 2015-11-13 Accepted : 2015-11-13 Published : 2014-09-01

Keywords: reading ability, Dynamic assessment, Zone of Proximal Development, Guthke&#039, s Lerntest approach,

Abstract :

The intention of the present paper is to seek whether gender has any impact on the effectiveness of applying Guthke's Lerntest approach in reading comprehension. For this purpose, after selecting 60 intermediate EFL learners, they were arbitrarily categorized to four clusters of males and females, two experimental and two control groups, each consisting of 15 male and 15 female learners. Both control and experimental groups took part in a reading performance class, but just the main groups (experimental) were subjected to interventionist model of dynamic assessment (DA) on their reading tests, and control groups were assessed through static testing method. A pretest and a posttest were given to the intermediate level and, a questionnaire comprising 16 items was given to the experimental groups to elicit their attitudes towards the application of Guthke's Lerntest approach. To examine the hypotheses of the current research, independent t-test and Likert -scale were used. The results of the study revealed that EGM and EGF learners were not very much different with regard to their performances on the reading post-test. In addition, the learners held highly positive attitudes towards DA practices in their EFL setting.