The investigation of using dynamic assessment to enhance English academic vocabulary knowledge of Thai low proficiency undergraduate students

Abstract

Students in university settings require English academic vocabulary to succeed in academic English (Phoocharoensil, 2015). Vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) are tools to help learners acquire and improve vocabulary knowledge (Nation, 2001), and an examination of the dynamic nature of employing VLS should be conducted (Gu, 2020). Dynamic assessment (DA) is an alternative assessment that consistently and systematically combines assessment and instruction to help learners reach their zone of proximal development (ZPD) by using mediation from more competent others (Lantolf & Poehner, 2004). Thus, this study used DA to equip learners with VLS to learn academic vocabulary. The study aimed to 1) investigate the effects of the dynamic assessment model on low proficiency students’ English academic vocabulary knowledge and 2) explore students’ attitudes toward the use of the dynamic assessment model on English academic vocabulary knowledge. This study adopted a mixed-methods design with the intensity of qualitative methodology. The participants were five second-year students who retook the basic English foundation course in their first year. They were selected by using two vocabulary tests as screening instruments. The intervention was intensive tutoring that lasted four weeks, each of which was for one task type: the morphology task, the part of speech task, the guessing meaning from context task, and the sentence writing task. The instruments used to collect quantitative data included the pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest, and those employed to elicit qualitative data were recordings of DA sessions, verbal reports, the researcher’s field notes, students’ diaries, an attitude questionnaire, and a semi-structured interview protocol. Quantitative data were analyzed by means of raw scores and descriptive statistics, while thematic analysis was utilized to analyze qualitative data.

The findings showed that DA had minimal positive effects on academic vocabulary learning. The student participants understood the word’s meaning but not its grammatical functions in contextual sentences. The problems of reading at a sentence level, grammar, and syntax were major obstacles, and teaching students to use dictionaries was necessary. Moreover, the learning gain of each student from the group dynamic assessment (GDA) was unequal. Regarding the students’ attitudes, they thought learning academic vocabulary through DA was new and useful, and they appreciated having friends to help in GDA. However, their background learning experience, personality, and English ability sometimes hindered them from sharing ideas in the group. To conclude, the DA model uncovered the underlying problems in low proficiency students’ cognitive process to learn vocabulary with GDA and the student findings suggested implications to assist them.