The Effect of Morphological Dynamic Assessment on EFL Learner's Morphological Awareness

1. Introduction Dynamic assessment (DA) is grounded in the Vygotskyan concept of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and includes mediated teacher-learner dialog during the assessment procedure. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of DA on EFL learners’ morphological awareness. A secondary aim of the study was to examine whether there was a relationship between dynamic assessment and static assessment measures.
In this study, a new approach to measure morphology was adopted targeting the shortcomings of measures of morphological awareness, which have been dually noted in the literature (Apel, Diehm, & Apel, 2013; Moats & Smith, 1992). Neither criterion-referenced nor norm-referenced assessments that adequately assess derivational morphology are available (Moats & Smith, 1992); therefore, a new method of assessment can be adopted to examine morphology.
Despite promising findings gained from the implementation of DA in the domain of L1 morphological awareness (Larsen & Nippold, 2007; Ram, Marinellie, Benigno, & McCarthy, 2013; Wolter & Pike, 2015), no published study has tried to find whether a DA of morphological awareness task may improve morphological awareness in the EFL context. In this regard, the current study has applied the principles of DA to the teaching and assessment of EFL learners’ morphological awareness in order to offer an alternative perspective on assessment and its relevance to teaching and learning of morphological awareness based on the sociocultural theory of mind developed by Vygotsky (1987).
2. Methodology The participants of this study were two groups of female students each consisting of 25 students between the ages of 14 and 18, all of whom had enrolled at the intermediate level of general English classes in Iran Language Institute, Yazd branch. First, all of the participants of this study, who were at the same level of general English proficiency based on the institute’s policies, in the experimental and control groups completed the static morphological awareness task (SMAT). In the DA sessions, students in the experimental group were asked to define each targeted word (e.g., define the word cookery). If needed, a series of prompts or scaffolds, consistent with Larsen and Nippold’s (2007) task, was then systematically provided to determine the level of assistance needed to define the given word. After each cue, the researcher paused for up to 10 seconds; if no response was given or the language learner responded incorrectly, the next clue was provided. In addition, the scoring stipulations of Larsen and Nippold (2007) were further adapted for EFL students and were similar to those of Ram et al. (2013). Finally, the SMAT, was administered in the posttest aimed at understanding the extent to which the intervention affected students’ reading morphological awareness.
3. Discussion The first question of this study addressed the effect of DA task on morphological awareness. Comparing A comparison of the pre- and post- static morphological awareness of the students indicated that their performance on the dynamic morphological task significantly improved through the use of scaffolding [(t =3.81, df =48, p4. Conclusion There was a significant improvement in the EFL learners’ ability to demonstrate morphological knowledge on low-frequency derivatives, indicating that scaffolding prompts likely resulted in morphological improvement. The findings can be a unique contribution to the literature as the study examines improvement in morphological awareness performance via DA, a subject that does not seem to have been investigated in previous research in the EFL context. In addition, findings concerning the validity of the DATMA are encouraging. In the current study, the dynamic measure was shown to have adequate internal consistency. Findings show that the DATMA had a strong relationship with the SMAT, a static measure of morphological awareness. It can be concluded that the DA was not just a measure of individual variations in a morphological analysis task; it was a measure of individual variations in a student’s ability to respond to adult instruction. Generally, static measures typically assess already-developed abilities whereas dynamic measures are an indicator of a student’s potential to learn new information (Lantolf & Pohner, 2004). The DATMA task may have potential as a tool to help determine an individualized instruction plan for EFL learners to improve their morphological awareness. Since each successive prompt increases the amount of scaffolding that is given to a language learner, it could potentially help a mediator how much instructional support needs to be provided. All in all, DA may open a new horizon in teaching and assessing morphology, paving the way for language learners to learn vocabulary more efficiently.