Dynamic Assessment of EFL Text Comprehension

The goal of this article is to explore the feasibility of the development and implementation of the dynamic assessment procedure in such curriculum-based areas as English as a foreign language (EFL). Vygotsky's notion of the Zone of Proximal Development and Feuerstein's concept of Mediated Learning Experience served as a theoretical base for the construction of the assessment procedure. The procedure included a pre-test, mediated learning phase and a post-test. It was applied with a group of 23 academically at-risk students who failed to pass the high school English exam. The results of the study indicate that dynamic procedure indeed provides information on students' learning potential over and beyond that which is available from the static test. This information can be used for the development of individual learning plans attuned to the students' special learning needs.