The Effect of Group Dynamic Assessment on Raising Young Iranian EFL Learners’ Metacognitive Awareness and Listening Comprehension

Listening has long been the neglected skill in second/foreign language acquisition, research, teaching, and assessment. And managing listening instruction and improving listening comprehension in the classroom are difficult for teachers and EFL learners. In this regard, this study aimed at investigating the effect of group dynamic assessment (GDA) on Iranian EFL learners’ metacognitive listening strategies and listening comprehension. Sixty young EFL listeners were assigned to an experimental and a control group at random. The experimental group (n = 30) was metacognitively instructed based on group dynamic assessment. The students in the control group (n = 30) were orally exposed to the same material without being metacognitively instructed by the same teacher. After ten instructional sessions, a listening comprehension posttest and the metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire (MALQ) were administered to both groups to measure their listening comprehension and metacognitive awareness, respectively. A comparison of pre and posttest scores of the GDA group showed that the learners benefited from metacognitive instruction as measured by the listening comprehension test. As well, it was found that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group on both listening comprehension and MALQ posttests.