Results of several studies prove that implementation of dynamic assessment in the second language teaching contributes to the definition of students' learning potential and improvement (Fulcher, 2013). This paper introduces a case study aiming to investigate the effectiveness of dynamic assessment on improving adult learners' writing skill in Greek as a second language.
Results of several studies prove that the implementation of dynamic assessment in second language teaching contributes to the development of students' learning potential and to their improvement (Fulcher, 2013). This research presents a case study aiming to investigate the effectiveness of dynamic assessment on improving adult migrants learners' writing skills in Greek as a second language. Based on Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (1978) and Aljaafreh & Lantolf's Regulatory scale-implicit to explicit (1994), the effects of mediation, feedback and teaching strategies on writing essays are presented. Particularly, the study aims to assess learners' writing skills as a result of: a) their previous knowledge, b) the development and the implementation of feedback strategies in teaching writing skills and c) finally to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies and methods in writing improvement. For the purpose of this project a four-week sandwich method intervention focused on teaching and assessing writing was carried out. According to this method, the intervention completed in a procedure of three stages. At the first stage, to define learners' previous knowledge a pre-test was designed and students wrote an essay with no help from their teacher. At the second stage, the teacher provided feedback and mediation in order to help students understand by themselves the mistakes in their essays and then the teacher suggested some writing strategies. At the third and final stage students wrote on their own an essay again (a post-test) with similar topic and level of difficulty as the one in the first stage. Pre and post tests were analyzed and compared according to a holistic scoring scale. Pre-tests findings showed that students didn't use any strategy on writing process, while the findings of post-tests showed that mediation and feedback helped students improve their writing skills on grammar accuracy, content development and organization of their essays.
