Mediation Through Dynamic Assessment: Facilitating EFL Learners’ Self-efficacy in Speaking Skills

Abstract

Though we cannot deny the importance of testing learners’ proficiency to determine their successful intake, the traditional forms of assessment often hinder their linguistic and cognitive development. In the context of Bangladesh, where English is considered a foreign language, it can be noticed that it is their inability to speak in English that the tertiary-level students experience the most difficulties with at universities following English medium instructions. Their situation worsens when they are evaluated traditionally for their spoken performances in their university language courses. That is why dynamic assessment can be an alternative to traditional assessment for evaluating learners’ speaking skills. It is closely associated with Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory. It believes that the proximity to written or spoken competence cannot be achieved by learners on their own. Therefore, mediation and zone of proximal development play crucial roles in establishing and extending the scope for learners to communicate with others. The interactionist approach of dynamic assessment benefits students in improving their speaking skills in many contexts because of its dialogic and mediated process. Thus, with the help of qualitative data analysis, this paper examines how consequential dynamic assessment will be in evaluating speaking skills at the tertiary level.