Impact of Written Corrective Feedback via Dynamic Assessment on Iranian EFL Learners’ Writing: Micro and Macro Levels

The present study aimed to assess the effects of written corrective feedback (WCF) on Iranian EFL learners’ writing at the macro (i.e., rhetorical organization, task response, cohesion, and coherence) and micro levels (i.e., lexical resource, punctuation, grammatical range, and accuracy) with a dynamic assessment approach in focus. To this end, the Oxford Quick Placement Test was administered to 150 male and female Iranian EFL learners, of whom 80 homogeneous intermediate learners were selected and assigned to an experimental group and a control group. The two groups received WCF in the sense that the teacher provided symbols such as WW for the wrong word, SP for spelling, T for tense, WO for word order, etc. while marking their written productions. The difference was that the experimental group experienced dynamic assessment of L2 writing during the term (in which the teacher taught and tested the learners in an ongoing fashion and provided prompts, hints, support, and encouragement every session), whereas the participants in the control group experienced a conventional class, devoid of an ongoing dynamic assessment component. At the end of the treatment, the collected data were statistically analyzed. The results showed that although the experimental group significantly outpaced the control group regarding the micro-levels of writing, no substantial difference was detected between the macro levels of writing in both groups. It was, thus, concluded that written corrective feedback along with the dynamic assessment can significantly improve the writing of the students at micro-levels.