The Impact of Interactionist and Interventionist Group Dynamic Assessment (GDA) on EFL Learners Listening Comprehension improvement

Drawing on sociocultural theory, this study explored the impact of the interactionist and interventionist approaches to group dynamic assessment (GDA) on Iranian intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners listening comprehension development. To this end, 90 intermediate EFL learners were divided into two experimental and one control groups. To ensure proficiency level of students, an abridged version of a sample TOEFL Junior Standard Testwas used. The reading comprehension section of the TOEFL Junior Standard Test was also used as pre and post -tests.Participants of each group were then assigned into several subgroups of four or five members. During 13 treatment sessions, the researchers in the first experimental group participated in each subgroup for a determined period of time, while applying interactionist approaches to dynamic assessment. In the second experimental group, based on the cake model of interventionist approach to dynamic assessment, the researcher gave students appropriate feedback, from the most implicit to the most explicit to participants of each subgroup. However, in the control group, the researcher used traditional forms of assessment in each session. One-way analysis of variance and post hoc analyses revealed that interactionist GDA was the most effective procedure for the intermediate EFL learners listening comprehension development. Moreover, although listening comprehension development of participants who received interventionist GDA, in average, was more than participants of control group, this improvement was not significant.The findings of the study underline the beneficial potentiality of GDA in its different form for the EFL learners listening comprehension improvement