On the Relationship between Interactive Virtual Assessment and Reading Fluency of Iranian EFL Learners

Formative assessment as a teacher-based, classroom-oriented dynamic tool is one vital tool, among some other factors, to accelerate students’ learning as well as to make informed decisions regarding the constructive interactions in the learning-teaching process. Yet, with the outbreak of COVID_۱۹ pandemic, and drastic transformation of classroom interactional architecture, from real to virtual, FA, as an inevitable tool at the service of learning-teaching, had to keep its efficiency. For this purpose, the researchers, employing their own creative model, Interactive-Virtual Formative Assessment, tried to bridge the disruptive gap in their classes. The design of the study, due to the nature of study and types of data collected was Quasi-experimental and the participants were ۲۶ grade-ten male students from a high school in Kermanshah city. Data was collected virtually from the individual participants through SHAD. One of the researchers constantly gave virtual-interactive feedback to the individual students on their recorded reading-out aloud sent to his private account by the participants, the procedure which lasted for four months. The collected data was analyzed regarding reading fluency of the participants (accuracy, speed and prosody) through paired-samples t-test and delayed post-test. The results indicated that following four months of constant interactive-virtual formative assessment, the performance of students in the class improved significantly regarding their speed, accuracy and prosody. The findings can have clear pedagogical implications for English teachers, TTC holders and curriculum designers. The present study was conducted employing quasi-experimental design and in a male school, so replicating the study by employing other research designs as well as considering such factors as gender, age, formal-informal contexts, etc. might gain different results.