The Differing Effect of Computerized Dynamic Assessment of L2 Reading Comprehension on High and Low Achievers

The results revealed that providing mediation in the form of hints contributed significantly to the increase of students` scores, and consequently to the improvement of their text comprehension. [...]this study confirmed that low achievers would benefit more than high achievers from a dynamic test of reading comprehension. [...]readers' development is the cognitive component of reading assessment which focuses on skills and strategies used by developing readers; such process-oriented reading assessment allows teachers to assess in the midst of learning. [...]in the first hint which is the most implicit one, the purpose is just to signal to the test takers that their answer is wrong and in this way, they are given the chance to go back to the item and try it again, and in the last hint test takers are provided with the right answer. Many DA practitioners (Tzuriel, 2000; Haywood & Lidz, 2007) who follow Feuerstein's Mediated Learning Experience (1980, 1987) and Vygotsky's (1978) concept of ZPD hold the belief that individuals who have not received adequate MLE in the past would benefit more from mediation provided during DA session than those who had rich learning experiences. [...]in line with the above mentioned authors, we hypothesized that low achievers would make bigger gains on dynamic test and would narrow the gap with their counterparts in high achieving group.