The Impact of Interactionist Mediation Phase of Dynamic Assessment as a Testing Tool to Deviate Anxious Learners Towards Facilitative Anxiety

AbstractAlthough the interactionist mediation model of dynamic assessment contrary to the static assessment is well supported way of assessment in English language environment, everyday new related language issues come to its domain to make it more powerful than it is. The dynamic assessment along with its three phases: pretest, mediation, and posttest, has been premised on the Zone of Proximal Development stated by Vygotsky. This study aims at demonstrating the effect of interactive mediation phase of dynamic assessment as a useful instrument, helping anxious learners to overcome the debilitative (dysphoric) anxiety they bring with themselves to the classroom, and with the help of interactive mediation, to move to one step further to a perfect facilitative (euphoric) anxiety. To do so, 100 participants of pre-intermediate level of proficiency, all in the same age, half males and half females were selected by a convenient sampling procedure in one of the institutes in Tehran, Daneshmand. Then the participants were given a standard anxiety test in order that the researcher could separate high anxious learners from the mid and low ones. After that, with the help of the results, 30 high-anxious learners were assigned equally to the control group and the experimental group. The control group was assessed by a static assessment while the experimental group was evaluated through an interactive mediation phase of dynamic assessment. The same standardized anxiety pretest was given to the participants at the end of course as the post-test. Finally, it was found that the interactionist mediation phase of the dynamic assessment can provide a facilitative anxiety that is required for the classroom environment