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Built on Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory, Dynamic Assessment (DA) integrates teaching and assessment through mediator-learner interactions to promote learner development. This study employed interactionist DA to diagnose Chinese university EFL learners' reading difficulties and promote their reading proficiency in a seven-week study. The design included a pre-test, a four-week Enrichment Program, a post-test, and a transfer test. Five learners completed each test both in a non-dynamic (NDA) and DA form. The learners' individual interactions with a mediator in DA were recorded, transcribed and analyzed via Nvivo. In addition, the learners' independent performances (IPs) on the NDA and DA, difficulties encountered in the process, the mediator's prompts provided for the learners, and the learners' mediated performances (MPs) were all identified and analyzed. Comparisons of the learners' IPs and MPs across the tests showed that DA contributed to learners' reading proficiency development, and this progress was evident both in their post-test IPs and MPs.

Simple Summary: Roughly 25% of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients subsequently experience isolated locoregional recurrence following definitive radiation therapy (RT). For these scenarios, thoracic reirradiation (re-RT) has become an increasingly common consideration, with improved feasibility due to technological advancements that have made it safer to deliver high doses of RT in the retreatment setting. Proton beam therapy (PBT) is an attractive choice for re-RT due to its ability to spare radiation to adjacent previously treated normal tissues. Here, we evaluate outcomes with PBT for the definitive re-RT of recurrent NSCLC within the previously irradiated thorax. Background/Objectives: This retrospective study evaluates outcomes of 66 patients who underwent reirradiation (re-RT) with proton beam therapy (PBT) for recurrent non-small cell lung cancer. Methods: Toxicity was scored via the CTCAE v5.0, and outcomes estimated using the Kaplan–Meier method, with associations evaluated via Cox proportional hazards and logistic regression analyses. Results: Patients were treated to a median re-RT prescription of 66 Gy/33 fxs (BED10 = 79 Gy; IQR: 71–84 Gy) at an interval of 1.4 years from prior RT. Half (50%) received concurrent chemotherapy. At 14 months follow-up, the median OS and PFS were 5 months (95%CI: 13–17) and 12.5 months (95%CI: 10–15), respectively. On multivariable analysis, a higher RT dose (BED10 > 70 Gy) [HR0.37; 95%CI: 0.20–0.68, p = 0.001] and concurrent chemotherapy (HR0.48; 95%CI: 0.28–0.81, p = 0.007) were associated with improved PFS, while treatment site overlap was adversely associated (HR1.78; 95%CI: 1.05–3.02, p = 0.031). The median PFS for definitive RT with concurrent chemotherapy (n = 28), definitive RT alone (BED10 > 70 Gy) [n = 22], and lower prescription RT (BED10 < 70 Gy) [n = 16] was 15.5 months (95%CI: 7.3–23.7), 14.1 months (95%CI: 10.9–17.3), and 3.3 months (95%CI: 0–12.3), respectively (log-rank, p = 0.006), with corresponding 2-year estimates of 37% (±9), 18% (±8), and 12.5% (±8), respectively. The incidence of Grade 3+ toxicity was 10.5% (6% pulmonary; 3% esophageal; and 1.5% skin), including one Grade 4 bronchopulmonary hemorrhage but no Grade 5 events. Cases with central site overlap had higher composite Dmax to the esophagus (median 87 Gy [IQR:77–90]), great vessels (median 120 Gy [IQR:110–138]), and proximal bronchial tree (median 120 Gy [IQR:110–138]) as compared to other cases (p ≤ 0.001 for all). However, no significant associations were identified with Grade 3+ events. Conclusions: Thoracic re-RT with PBT is an option for recurrent NSCLC with acceptable outcomes and toxicity for select patients. When feasible, higher prescription doses (BED10 > 70 Gy) should be delivered for definitive intent, and concurrent chemotherapy may benefit individual cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study used computerized dynamic assessment (CDA) as a teaching and assessment method to promote Chinese EFL learners' reading comprehension, with a quasi-experimental design in which the control and experimental groups were each given three tests but in different formats. Each test consisted of multiple choice questions (MCQs) selected from reading sections of a collection of original forms of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL); however, CDA was employed for the experimental group, whereas conventional MCQs were used for the control group. The two groups also differed in their 4-week enrichment programs. The experimental group was taught using CDA, whereas conventional teaching methods were used for the control group. Learners' performance on the three tests was compared within and between the two groups by using repeated measures mixed factorial analysis of variance, whereby the advantages of CDA over conventional teaching and assessment methods were identified. The results indicated that although reading comprehension performance in the two groups was quite similar at the beginning of the study, the experimental group performed significantly more efficiently than the control group after four weeks of learning. This study's contributions and implications are discussed.

Politeness has been a source of inspiration for research in pragmatics and inter- and intra-cultural communication. However, the existing literature focusses more on how politeness is realized in the context of first language use. Few studies have investigated the issue related to the use of English by second language learners from varying subcultures within the same cultural tradition. The present study examines how Hong Kong and Shanghai tertiary-level learners of English convey politeness in their business letter writing, as reflected in the use of modal sequences. Three hundred business letters were collected from students in Hong Kong and another 300 from students in Shanghai. Majoring in various disciplines, these students were all in their final year of study, and their English proficiency level was generally scored at B2, as compared with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. Following a mixed-methods approach, the study tracked a rather complex distribution of politeness realizations by different modal sequences. The findings were that Hong Kong ESL learners appeared to be more strategic users of modal sequences as evidenced by a variety of usage examples from the two purpose-built learner corpora, which were developed to monitor and compare English learners' business writing at the tertiary level. Another finding was that epistemic modality tended to better preserve politeness in the writing.

This empirical study examines how English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners use their vocabulary knowledge for inferring meanings of unknown words in reading comprehension. The data, collected through interviews with young adult ESL students in Canadian universities, indicate that: (a) semantic and morphological aspects of vocabulary knowledge play an important role in learners' comprehension processes; (b) a positive relationship exists between certain aspects of learners' vocabulary knowledge and their lexical inferencing ability; and (c) in processing the meaning of unknown words, all learners looked for cues to meaning, but learners with varying depths of vocabulary knowledge tended to focus on varying strategies.

Background: Predicated on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD), dynamic assessment (DA) integrates teaching with assessment in a single activity by providing mediation to help learners perform beyond their independent functioning and simultaneously promote learner development. It advantages over traditional psychometric tests in that DA can not only reveal the learners' actual level of development from their independent performance as what the traditional tests did but also their potential level of development from the mediations the learners need during the mediator-learner interactions. However, the number of learners a DA assessor can help is limited due to the time demand of mediator-learner interactions. To overcome this weakness, researchers are turning to computerized dynamic assessment (C-DA). Methods: The study aimed to find out the learners' difficulties in reading comprehension, the effects of C-DA and the learners' reflections on the C-DA program. Multiple choice questions in the reading comprehension section were adapted from CET4 (College English Test, Band 4). Two groups of students participated in the present study. In the pilot study, a group of students were asked to write down their thinking process after they finished a reading test, from which the students' difficulties in reading comprehension test were identified and mediations were worked out afterwards. The mediation levels and the scoring scale were also determined and put into the C-DA program devised for the main study. Another group of students were asked to do a reading test using C-DA. After the test, a learner profile capturing the students' performances in the test was generated from the program. Finally, a questionnaire was distributed to collect data for the students' reflections on C-DA. Results: It was found that the learners mainly encountered three difficulties in their reading comprehension test: (1) new words were the biggest barrier; (2) learners felt hard to locate on the relevant sentences in the original passage from the information provided in the question; (3) their inferential abilities are weak. The analysis of the data generated by the C-DA program indicated that C-DA far exceeded the traditional static assessment for its stronger diagnostic capacities and the deeper insights it provided for subsequent teaching. The results of the questionnaire showed that C-DA was greatly welcomed by the students and believed to be particularly helpful in building up confidence for those low achievers as identified in traditional static assessment. Conclusions: The major contribution of the present study was to implement DA principles to larger scale study with the use of computer technology and gain valuable insights for future studies. However, limitations remained and future studies should try to address the issues discussed in the present study.

Grammar assessment has long been a pivotal and regular component of almost all high-stakes English tests in China. In writing grammar items, however, test developers tend to depend largely on their individual knowledge of grammar, or even intuition, without much reference to the typicality or de facto uses of the language. To address this problem in the Chinese assessment context, we demonstrate the benefits of making use of language corpora in developing and validating grammar tests. The present study adopted a corpus-based approach to investigating the content validity of the grammar section of a high-stakes test, the National Matriculation English Test (Shanghai). It was found that the grammar section under study has fairly appropriate content coverage and relevance, which suggests the test content generally assesses the intended grammatical features. In addition, evidence of content significance was present through a strong linkage between the grammar items in the test and grammatical errors produced by learners who had previously taken the test. However, flaws were detected for content typicality, because certain grammar items failed to conform closely to native English speakers' typical output. On the basis of these results, a procedure is proposed for conducting corpus-based content validation for high-stakes grammar tests.