The Effect of Dynamic Assessment as an Instructional Tool on Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Learning

No doubt that the scope of vocabulary in teaching/learning English is a primary goal. Dynamic Assessment (DA) serving as both instructional and evaluative device has opened new horizons for vocabulary teaching and assessment. This study, having taken the concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), will meticulously dig into mediated-oriented teaching and assessment. Accordingly, this study was conducted in Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch. Students of intermediate level participated in the study and they were randomly chosen as control and experimental groups. Sixty students out of 90 were selected as participants in two groups, after administering the Preliminary English Test (PET) and the proficiency level of the students was homogenized. Through a pre-test, a number of unknown vocabularies for the participants were identified, the unknown vocabularies were then given to the participants in four short passages, and finally Dynamic Assessment was applied to help the experimental group learn those new words, while Control group was exposed to static method of teaching vocabulary. The final Independent t-test between the pre-test and post-test of control and experimental groups indicate that vocabulary learning rate of learners can be enhanced using dynamic assessment. The results of this study can be useful and informative for both teachers and learners in providing them with new horizons of instructing students through a step by step procedure.