What is Zone of Actual Development

This chapter presents the theoretical background of dynamic assessment (DA) and its praxis with pedagogical suggestions for foreign language writing instructional settings. Resting on Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (1978), DA asserts that there is a need for blending instruction with assessment because of the social interaction's salience on cognition modification. Thus, DA adopts learning-and-learner-based feedback approaches and a present-to-future model of assessment, which rests on reciprocal teacher-learner interaction. Grounding in the need for enlightening DA in an EFL setting, this chapter presents reciprocal interactions between a teacher and four students. The interaction analyses unveil that the teacher has adopted a variety of mediational moves to finely instruct the students and diagnose their microgenesis, and students have displayed various reciprocity acts towards the mediational moves provided to them, which unpacks each student's zone of proximal development. Based on these findings, the chapter ends with suggestions for EFL writing teachers.