Akbari, zahra

effect of diagnostic vs. formative assessment on the Iranian intermediate EFL learnersʹ performance in selective and productive reading comprehension tasks

AbstractOne of the essential elements of pedagogy is assessment The recent studies haveassessed the Iranian participants reading comprehension through diagnosticassessment utilizing the selective and productive tasks observing that providingdiagnostic feedback to the English learners could have a positive effect on theirperformance Since there was almost no previous work considering both assessmentsat the same time the purpose of this research was to examine the effect of diagnosticand formative assessment on the Iranian intermediate EFL learners performance inselective and productive reading comprehension tasks to test the generalizability ofprevious findings on different levels Finally both male and female learners took partin the study in order to verify whether the results of female participants in previousresearch are gender related or not Accordingly thirty intermediate Iranian EFLlearners were selected They were classified into three groups diagnostic formativeand comparison groups For the diagnostic group the instructor used the evidencegathered through the pre test to design the lesson plan For the formative group theinstructor did not make any prior changes in her lesson plan but continuouslyinteracted with the learners providing feedback The comparison group did notreceive any treatment The results indicated that both diagnostic and formativeassessment had a statistically significant effect on the Iranian intermediate EFLlearners performance in selective and productive reading comprehension tasks Although formative assessment was seen to be slightly more effective there was nosignificant difference between these kinds of assessment The findings haveimplications for instruction and research The primary implication is that educatorsshould investigate and utilize diagnostic and formative assessment Additionally material developers can use these two kinds of assessment as guidelines to designactivities KeyWords Diagnostic Assessment Formative Assessment ReadingComprehension Selective Task Productive Task VII