ABSTRACT
By encouraging students to assess their process of language learning, Dynamic Assessment (DA) harmonizes instruction, mediation, and feedback seamlessly. In second-year PCA Chinese courses, engaging students at different levels and keeping all levels motivated to improve is a necessary inevitability. While PCA is effective for adding value to different skill level learners through performance, DA provides a foundation for cueing performance context, a system for instructor and peer mediation, and individualized feedback opportunities for performance improvements. The goals of using DA include: to assess language use holistically, to motivate students to be accountable for the strategies that help them the most, and to offer instructors a better way to interpret the learning process. In conjunction with setting performance as the major instructional activity, design strategies for a student-oriented daily grading system that helps to mediate students' learning behaviors through effective feedback are discussed. Course feedback reveals that students are more engaged, develop an awareness over their metacognitive learning, and remain in the Chinese program for upper-level courses.
