Implementing Group Dynamic Assessment with Thai EFL Undergraduate Students: A Closer Look at Their Academic Writing Ability

The present study aimed to explore how the group dynamic assessment (G-DA) can improve students’ writing ability by taking a closer look at five aspects of writing ability: organization, content, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics. In this study, G-DA was integrated with genre-based writing instruction. Fifteen sophomores at one public university who studied English for research participated in the study. Pre-, post-, and transcendence tests were employed to identify the extent to which the students’ writing ability in G-DA has improved. In G-DA process, students received several mediations, including narrowing down errors, nominating a potential type of error, and providing clues to help students revise the text. The students wrote three different types of essays: process, cause-effect, and problem-solution. The one-way ANOVA repeated measures showed a significant increase across the pre-, post-, and transcendence test scores. The results also indicated that the implementation of G-DA had a positive impact on the development of five aspects of writing ability, including organization, content, vocabulary, language use, and mechanics.