Integrating Critical Thinking and Dynamic Assessment in Teaching Speaking and Writing Strategies: Iranian EFL Learners’ Productive Skills in Focus
Subject Areas :
Raheleh Taheri
1
,
Hossein Vahid Dastjerdi
2
,
omid tabatabaei
3
,
Hadi Salehi
4
1 -
2 -
3 - English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University, Najafabad Branch, Najafabad
4 -
Keywords: Critical thinking, dynamic assessment, intermediate EFL learners, speaking and writing strate-gies,
Abstract :
The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of teaching speaking and writing strat-egies based on critical thinking and dynamic assessment on the development of the speaking and writing abilities of Iranian language learners. For this purpose, among about 200 language learners of an accredited language institute with several active branches, 80 intermediate-level learners were selected through the OQPT test and were divided into a treatment and control group with an equal number of learners. The treatment group learned speaking and writing strategies through the application of critical thinking principles via dynamic assessment. The control group learned speaking and writing strategies based on the common school method without receiving critical thinking or dynamic assessment strategies. At the beginning of the re-search, a speaking and writing pre-test was administered to all the participants to check their performance, and at the end of the treatment, the same speaking and writing test was adminis-tered as a post-test. Also, appropriate statistical instruments were exploited to gauge the partici-pants’ speaking and writing development due to the applied treatment. The obtained results were finally analyzed using SPSS software and related statistical tests to answer the research questions of the study. The results revealed that the integration of dynamic assessment and critical think-ing strategies significantly impacts the participants’ performance in speaking and written com-munication. The findings obtained from this investigation have promising implications for EFL instructors and learners, designers of educational materials, and developers of curricula.
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