The Effect Of Dynamic Assessment On English Reading Abilities Of Senior High School Students In Border Area

Reading ability assessment of high school students has been in most cases static assessment in China for many years, paying much attention to students’ learning results. It neglects students’ learning process, which impedes the development of students’ learning potential to some extent. What’s more, static assessment cannot meet the special learning needs of senior high school students in border area, resulting in their weaknesses in English reading ability. This thesis aims at applying dynamic assessment instead in high school English classroom in border area to explore the effects of dynamic assessment on English reading ability of high school students in border area. This study also tries to suggest a feasible model of dynamic assessment according to characteristics of the senior high school students in border area.This study is an empirical study based on a review of previous research on dynamic assessment. The study is designed to answer the following questions: What is the effect of dynamic assessment on senior high school students’ reading abilities? What is the feasible model of dynamic assessment for senior high school English reading class?This study was carried out with both qualitative and quantitative methods. The subjects of the study were 77 senior high students at a High School in Jinghong from two Senior One classes. The two classes both are general classes. One was experimental class and another was the controlled class. On the basis of literature research, the author integrated the advantages of dynamic assessment models abroad, taking into consideration of characteristics of high school students in border area. Based on Campione and Brown’s “Graduated Prompt Approach” model, the author develops “Graduated Prompt Approach and Interaction” model. The study lasted for 12 weeks, following “pre-test” – “training”– “post-test” procedure. During the training phase, the author predicted students’ Zone of Proximal Development of English reading ability, and then, used the “Graduated Prompt Approach and Interaction” model.The results showed that application of dynamic assessment had some positive effects on improving English reading ability of senior high students in border area. Reading abilities such as “extracting salient points to summarize” received the most significant improvement through the teaching experiment. It is shown that the “Graduated Prompt Approach and Interaction” model was feasible to senior high students in border area according to other English teachers’ class assessment as well as students’ feedback.Finally, this thesis discussed the limitations of this study, and proposed some suggestions for future research. It is expected that the study of dynamic assessment in the future will be more involved in the field of English teaching, and the choice of research subjects can be expanded to the English learners at different stages and regions.