Dynamic Assessment of Students’ Academic Writing: Vygotskian and Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspectives - Hardcover

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Dr Prithvi N. Shrestha, an award-winning author (British Council ELTons), is Senior Lecturer in English Language at The Open University, UK. He has co-authored English for Academic and Specific Purposes books and published research articles on academic writing assessment in distance education and English language education. His research interests include academic writing, Systemic Functional Linguistics, sociocultural theory, writing assessment, mobile learning and teacher development in developing countries.

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This book explores the application of an innovative assessment approach known as Dynamic Assessment (DA) to academic writing assessment, as developed within the Vygotskian sociocultural theory of learning. DA blends instruction with assessment by targeting and further developing students’ Zone of Proximal Development. Thus, the book applies DA to assess academic writing by developing a set of DA procedures for academic writing teachers. It further demonstrates the application of Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), combined with DA, to track undergraduate business management students’ academic writing and conceptual development in distance education.

 

This work extends previous DA studies in three key ways: i) it explicitly focuses on the construction of a macrogenre (whole text) as opposed to investigations of decontextualized language fragments, ii) it offers the first in-depth application of the powerful SFL tool to analyse students’ academic writing to track their academic writing trajectory in DA research, and iii) it identifies a range of mediational strategies and consequently expands Poehner’s (2005) framework of mediation typologies.

The book will be of great value to academic writing researchers and teachers, language assessment researchers and postgraduate students interested in academic writing, alternative assessment and formative feedback in higher education.

 

The significant and original contribution of this volume arises particularly from the combination of dynamic assessment (DA) and systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in an academic writing context in UK higher education. This will resonate with researchers and practitioners interested in the development of university student writing skills in EAP programmes, in writing centres, in learning centres or in English in the disciplines programmes. The approach is clearly explained and includes three analysis chapters (focusing on business case study analysis genres; tutor-student DA mediation, and transfer potential) that could separately or together usefully inform practice or research. Sheena Gardner, Coventry University.

 

In this book, Shrestha applies an original blend of theory and practice in a demonstration of how feedback dialogue around academic writing can inform disciplinary meaning-making. That the dialogue was carried out in an entirely digital environment makes the book particularly timely at this moment when higher education looks set for a digital transformation. Dr Jim Donohue, SFHEA, Manchester Metropolitan University.