Effects of Dynamic Assessment of Speaking Skills on Learners’ Oral Fluency

The Case of Higher Education

Resumen

One of the factors that determine second language (L2) oral fluency is knowledge of grammatical structures. The purpose of this research was, thus, to examine the extent of the effects of   dynamic assessment (DA) of English language structures on learners' oral fluency. To do so, an experimental   study was conducted on 48 second-year English language students of Hawassa University, Ethiopia. The participants took static pretests prepared based on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Speaking Exam Syllabus. Then, the tests were scored in terms of speech rate, articulation rate, and mean length of utterance using PRAAT software. Next, the participants were categorized into control and treatment  groups  based on systematic  random sampling,  and  the equality of these two groups was checked using  Levine’s  Test  of  Homogeneity of Variance .  Finally, the treatment group received DA of speaking skill and the control group got non-dynamic assessment (NDA) of speaking skill for 12 weeks. The result showed that DA had no statistically significant effect on students’ oral fluency. The study calls for further investigation to identify the most determining factors of L2 learners' oral fluency.