On the Effects of Dynamic Assessment on English Public Speaking Anxiety of English Majors

Lyu Xuying

【Abstract】Dynamic assessment is a new means of intelligence evaluation that rose in the Western countries two or three decades ago. Based on a developmental view of intelligence, this assessment aims to evaluate the learning potential of the participants and promote a change of their cognitive mechanism.This empirical study was carried out with both qualitative and quantitative methods aiming to explore the effects of dynamic assessment on nurturing English majors public speaking competence from the perspective of public speaking anxiety .

【Key words】dynamic assessment; English majors; English public speaking competence; public speaking anxiety

I. Introduction

Dynamic assessment is a relatively new approach to L2 assessment that has been introduced to L2 research and educational community by Lantolf and Poehner (2004) and Poehner and Lantolf (2005). Since 2004, there has been growing support for the use of DA in language pedagogy (Ableeva, 2010, Lantolf & Poehner, 2004; Poehner, 2005). The study is designed to investigate the effects of DA in the English public speaking course on English majors public speaking competence from the perspective of public speaking anxiety.

II. Research Design

The subjects of the study were 67 juniors of English majors in Southwest Petroleum University. The author chose the Literature English class as the experimental class ( hereafter, EC) with 41 students, and the Petroleum English class was the controlled class ( hereafter, CC) with 26 students.

III. Results and Discussions

For public speaking anxiety, students in both EC and CC finished the pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire of Personal Report of Confidence as a Speaker. The students response will be analyzed as follows:

The students with score of 91- 150 are of high public speaking anxiety, the ones with 76- 90 are of medium public speaking anxiety, and those with 30- 75 are of low public speaking anxiety. As indicated in Table 1, the number of students with high, medium and low public speaking anxiety is 19、18 and 4 respectively, while after the experiment, the number of high public speaking anxiety has decreased to 9, the one of medium public speaking anxiety has dropped to 10 and the amount of low public speaking anxiety raised to 22. And the average public speaking anxiety in posttest (76.55) is far less than that of pretest (84.45) with P-value of Paired Sample T-test being 0.001(<0.05), which expresses that the progress of students in public speaking anxiety has reached statistic differences.

For students public speaking anxiety in CC, Table 2 shows the number of students with high, medium and low public speaking anxiety being 11、10 and 5 respectively, and after one semester, the number of high public speaking anxiety changed to 10, the number of medium public speaking anxiety remained the same and the amount of low public speaking anxiety went up to 6. And the average public speaking anxiety in posttest (84.96) is close to that of pretest (85.60) with P-value of Paired Sample T-test being 0.78((>0.05), which indicates that there is no statistic difference in students public speaking anxiety in CC.

IV. Conclusion

What can be concluded from the analysis is that DA has exerted positive influences on relieving students public speaking anxiety, one of the influencing factors in students EPSC.

References：

[1]Lantolf,J.P.&M.E.Poehner.Dynamic; Assessment:Bringing the Past into the Future[J].Journal of Applied Linguistics.2004.1:49-74.