Think-Pair-Share as a Formative Assessment Strategy: EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Learning

Practicing innovative, constant, dynamic, ongoing and process-oriented assessment techniques with constructive and communicative feedback can consolidate and stabilize learners’ instruction and learning. This study investigated the impact of the think-pair-share (TPS) formative assessment (FA) strategy on Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension skill and vocabulary knowledge. Sixty male intermediate EFL participants from two intact classes took part in the revised Cambridge Preliminary English Test and forty-eight students were chosen by analyzing their scores considering two standard deviations above or below the mean. The participants were from Allameh Jafari high school of Marand. They were assigned to two intact groups of twenty-four learners. This quasi-experimental study was implemented by using a pretest and posttest design to quantitatively collect data so as to compare the experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG). The EG was assessed through the TPS assessment technique, while the CG was assessed using the product-oriented summative assessment (SA) tool. To find out the effect of the assessment techniques on reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge, the two groups of the study were assessed for twenty weeks. Then, Independent Samples T-test and the one-way ANCOVA were used to compare and analyze the pretest and the posttest scores of the participants in the two groups. The findings indicated that the EG with the TPS FA technique outperformed the CG with the SA strategy in reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. The findings can be pedagogically rewarding for learners, teachers and theoreticians and may cast light on SLA research in applying FA techniques.