The Effectiveness of Diagnostic Assessment on the Development of Turkish Language Learners’ Narrative Skills as an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Task

• Main Author: Anjel Tozcu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages 2016-07-01
• Series: Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages
• Online Access: http://www.ncolctl.org/files/jncolctl-vol-19/Diagnostic-Assessment-on-the-Development-of-Turkish-Language-Learners%E2%80%99-Narrative-Skills.pdf
• ISSN: 1930-9031; 1930-9031

This study investigated the effectiveness of diagnostic assessment on improving students’ proficiency in narrating past events, an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Level 2 task. It found that students who were given a personalized learning plan subsequent to the diagnostic assessment interview significantly improved their proficiency in basic sentence structures than those in a control group. They used a significantly larger number of cohesive devices as compared to the control group and exhibited significantly increased accuracy in using cohesive devices than a control group. The students in the treatment group worked on the recommended activities based on the data gathered during the diagnostic assessment interview and the pre-interview questionnaires, i.e., the E & L, MBTI, and Barsch. The students in the control group spent the same amount of time reading narrations, doing comprehension exercise,s and following standard teacher feedback for improvement. Although both groups showed increases in accurate use of cohesive devices and proficiency in basic sentence structures, the treatment students showed significantly greater gains than the control students.