Intervention Analysis in Teaching Reading Comprehension through Dynamic Assessment: Heron’s Perspective

Teachers’ verbal behavior is a key contributor to provision of appropriate indirect intervention in language learning contexts; however, it is surprising that professionals in ELT, to date, have not proposed a structured oral/verbal framework to deliver intervention and assistance in language learning contexts. To help redress this gap, Heron’s Six-Category Intervention Analysis was adapted to put forward a new method to regulate the verbal behavior and actual sentences used by the instructors to intervene in the language learning contexts. 175 Iranian EFL learners taking general English courses with teaching reading comprehension skills and strategies in focus participated in four experimental groups and one control group. Five 35-member groups included control, written mediation only, authoritative intervention, facilitative intervention, and synergetic authoritative-facilitative interventions. Preliminary English Test was employed to evaluate the performance of language learners on their reading comprehension. Results indicated that firstly application of Six-Category Intervention Analysis while providing dynamic assessment induced significant changes in the performance of the groups. Secondly, facilitative intervention, and synergetic authoritative-facilitative interventions groups, generally outperformed other groups with the former ranking first in three, and the latter in two of the six reading comprehension tests.