the effect of interactional dynamic assessment on efl learners’ spoken grammar knowledge in private tutoring

Although there has been an increasing interest in two approaches of dynamic assessment (da), interventionist and interactionist da, in english as a foreign language learning (efl), the interactionist da has been accused by teachers of being “time-consuming” and “labor intensive” in the classroom. however, drawing on the interactional opportunity that is served by private tutoring to the teacher and the learner(s), this experimental study set out to examine the effectiveness of interactionist da on the development of efl learners’ spoken grammar knowledge in private tutoring, if not in large classes. to this end, two intermediate-level female efl learners were to narrate the events in given picture stories while they were supported by their teacher’s (the first author) mediation: consisting of integrated instruction into da of discourse markers as grammatical elements. the interactions between the teacher and the learners, which lasted for eight sessions in four weeks, were transcribed verbatim and compared to examine the learners’ development in using discourse markers. through the lens of sociocultural theory, data analyses indicated the improvement in learners’ abilities to use discourse markers beyond their current level of knowledge about those spoken grammar particles. the findings of the study may open new windows of opportunities for teachers to draw on the potential of da in developing learners’ spoken grammar in private tutoring.