Synthesizing transformative education with dynamic assessment in developing EFL learners’ productive skills

Abstract This study was an initiative to investigate the extent to which synthesizing Transformative Education (TE) with Dynamic Assessment (DA) can contribute to developing EFL learners’ productive skills; speaking and writing. To do so, 105 Iranian university students majoring in English language were randomly assigned into four different classes, as control and experimental groups. The control groups were instructed based on pure TE-oriented approach, whereas the experimental groups were instructed based on the integration of TE with DA. Given the nature of the research questions, only the speaking and writing post-tests’ data meeting the required normality assumptions were analyzed based on parametric statistical approach (i.e. Independent Samples t-tests). The analyses revealed a significant difference between control and experimental groups in terms of both speaking and writing performances. So, TE integrated with DA is suggested as an innovative trend in foreign language education. The main implication might be for the practices in higher education to incorporate classroom activities such as critical thinking and class projects in their instructional delivery so that students would have the chance to participate in the teaching-learning process.

Abstract: This study was an initiative to investigate the extent to which synthesizing Transformative Education (TE) with Dynamic Assessment (DA) can contribute to developing EFL learners' productive skills; speaking and writing. To do so, 105 Iranian university students majoring in English language were randomly assigned into four different classes, as control and experimental groups. The control groups were instructed based on pure TE-oriented approach, whereas the experimental groups were instructed based on the integration of TE with DA. Given the nature of the research questions, only the speaking and writing post-tests' data meeting the required normality assumptions were analyzed based on parametric statistical approach (i.e. Independent Samples t-tests). The analyses revealed a significant difference between control and experimental groups in terms of both speaking and writing performances. So, TE integrated with DA is suggested as an innovative trend in foreign language education. The main implication might be for the practices in higher education to incorporate classroom activities such as critical thinking and class projects in their instructional delivery so that students would have the chance to participate in the teaching-learning process.
Gholam-Reza Abbasian ABOUT THE AUTHOR Azadeh Zarbafian, PhD candidate in TEFL at IAU, South Tehran Branch, Tehran, In Iran. Her research focuses on ELT methods and language assessment. She has published both in (inter) national journals & attended similar conferences Dr. Gholam-Reza Abbasian, is an assistant professor at Imam Ali University, Tehran, Iran. He offers Language Assessement, Research Methods & SLA courses at PhD program also as his research areas. He has published and presented more than 15 books, supervised many theses and dissertations, and published locally and internationally.
Dr. Ahmad Mohseni, associate professor at IAU, South Tehran Branch, English Dept.,Iran. His research focuses on L2 teacher education. He has published and presented papers (inter)nationally. Abdollah Baradaran, associate professor at IAU, Central Tehran Branch, English Dept., Iran. His research interest is language teaching and teacher education. He has presented and published papers (inter)nationally.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
The present research was conducted to improve the learning experience and the productive skills of the EFL learners through synthesizing Transformative Education with Dynamic Assessment, hoping that the results and findings would have practical implications for the EFL teachers. Two groups participated in the current research and the findings revealed that integration of TE with DA is an innovative trend in foreign language education which results in a significant difference between control and experimental groups at performing both speaking and writing skills.

Introduction
Transformative Education (TE) theory of Mezirow (1978) considers learning as a process within which the learners critically examine their world's framework. It considers knowledge gain and fundamental changes in the learner's beliefs, values, and perspectives within the process of human development as two critical aims of education. Based on TE principles, assessment is bifurcated with instruction as TE gets along with the notion of paradigm shift from testing to assessment. This is rooted in the notion that various forms of assessment, such as self-, peer-, authentic, dynamic, and in particular the formative one, facilitate the process of feedback exchange between the teacher and learning (Moran, 1997, & Hargreaves, 2005. As the focus of this very study, Dynamic Assessment (DA) is rooted in Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory of mind (SCT); a theory that shares a lot with the notion of TE in principles. Bifurcating assessment and instruction, DA considers assessment "as the means to move toward an always emergent (i.e., dynamic) future" (Pohner, 2005, p. 20) through which the mediator tries to help the learners not only actualize their actual competence but also what they cannot perform independently, and move to the next stage within their Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in the light of mediation and interaction (Pohner, 2008).
Contrary to all theoretical claims and the resultant practical and pedagogical implementations, there is a missing link in the literature indicating specific study trying to integrate TE and DA in a single study focusing on a certain area of language education, let alone some sporadic studies focusing on developing language skills (Bohrer-Levi, 2012;).
Given this trend of developments, this study tries to shed [some innovative] lights on the development of the language productive skills in the light of integrating DA and TE in an EFL setting; better to say making academic peace between the principles of SCT and TE. To do so, the problem and purpose are realized in the form of the following comparative research questions and respective null hypotheses: (1) Does integration of TE with DA affect speaking ability of EFL learners more significantly than TE does?
(2) Does integration of TE with DA affect writing ability of EFL learners more significantly than TE does?
The null hypotheses studied in the current research were as follows: H01: Integration of TE with DA does not affect speaking ability of EFL learners more significantly than TE does.
H02: Integration of TE with DA does not affect writing ability of EFL learners more significantly than TE does.

Literature review
TE is rooted in the constructivist view holding that meaning is constructed and developed through personal experience and is validated through interaction and communication with others. According to Mezirow (2000), leaning happens through objective and subjective reframing (Kitchenham, 2008, p. 110).
Objective reframing involves critical reflection on other's assumption and subjective reframing involves self-reflection of one's own assumption.
TE research continues to thrive since, according to Fergal Finnegan (2020), "key thinkers in the field such as Mezirow grasp at a very deep level that reality is highly complex and fluid and makes this central to the framing of the theory" (p.). Referring to all human daily problems and even traumas, he claims that "These sorts of social circumstances and life situations, our contributors suggest, also create opportunities for transformative learning". According to him, TE, of course, is suggested as an object of further research, but it in turn ultimately changes to be a means of remedy of all these problems in claiming that "A great deal of transformative education research … … … … can allow us to generatively respond to just such disjunctions and dilemmas". Such a claim is rationalized on the grounds that TE develops rational, collaborative, democratic modes of thinking, bolsters the capacity for meaningful agency, and affords the opportunity to elaborate new narratives and to re-story ourselves.
Moreover, the core idea within transformative education is "substantive dialogue and a commitment to equality". To this end, Buechner et al. (2020) argue that "we need to approach body-mind and the individual-within groups and shared-settings in a far more integrated and holistic way. This idea originates from Victor Turner (1969) notion of "liminality" (the state of being in-between, at a threshold). They argue that liminality presents opportunities for growth. The article brings into view something -the specific dynamics and qualities of intersubjective experience which lead to collective transformations.
In the same vein, Payne, H. et al. (2019) focus on the advantages of "persons in groups, the power of social institutions, and most centrally of all the intertwined nature of mind and body". Referring to the current suffering from "medically unexplained symptoms" (MUS) in contemporary society, they argue transformative learning theory can help explain and support "self-management" and release from such symptoms … In another feature article. Lee et al. (2020) look at transformative learning as a means to obtain "creative confidence." Their study revealed that "enhancing creativity amongst students entailed the "demystification of creativity". The findings suggest that the common understanding of creativity as a "gift", and rare, possessed by individuals can block creativity and thus unpicks a dualistic way of thinking about individual and collective creativity. Kang et al. (2020), discussing the effects of a yearlong professional development program on Chinese school leaders, say internationalization has certainly led to profound shifts in the assumptions of this group of school leaders. Since according to him personal meaning-making and distributed leadership models common in the Western educational system have had a transformative impact. Mezirow (1978) framed this theory based on his study on 83 women and he concluded that the reflection is one of the most crucial components of adult learning due to enabling people to reassess their existing assumptions that scaffold their beliefs, attitudes, and actions (Mezirow, 1990(Mezirow, , 1991(Mezirow, , 2000(Mezirow, , 2009). Meziorw's theory is based on Habermas' (1971) theory of knowledge constitutive interest. The perspective transformation has been a primary focus of adult education for over three decades. Perspective transformation is a term that was coined by Mezirow in 1975 to describe the central process of "adult development and the change toward thinking like an adult through a shift toward a more inclusive, differentiated, permeable, and integrated perspective" (1991a, p. 155). In this regard, Mezirow (1978) asserted that "by recognizing the social, economic, political, psychological, and religious assumptions that shape these [meaning] structures-presuppositions inherited but rarely examined critically-we can reconstruct our personal frame of reference, our self-concept, goals, and criteria for evaluating change" (p. 7). Besides, TE can be considered vital for adults' education as they transfer the current knowledge and experiences of their native language to the target one (Kegan, 2000;Kuhn, 1996). However, it is significant for adult learners to intentionally change and reshape their existing frame of references. This process of reconstruction happens during the course of reexamining and reflecting the systems of the first language and adjusting to the new information received in the target language (Mezirow, 1990).
Mezirow's TE theory is the approval of humanistic and constructivist perspectives in the philosophy of education (Baumgartner, 2012;Mezirow, 1994aMezirow, , 2009). According to Mezirow (2000), there is no definite universal knowledge that can be applied to every individual. Hence, human beings need to constantly negotiate meaning individually (Mezirow, 2000). When there is a gap in observed knowledge or experience, adults will think and adopt themselves to move forward in human development. These gaps which are considered as collided situations are the opportunities for TE. As Mezirow (2003) has argued, "'TE is a learning process that reconstructs, modifies, and transforms problematic or malfunctioning frame of reference-sets of fixed, unexamined, and unquestioned assumptions and expectations-to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, reflective, and emotionally able to change" (p. 58). Mezirow (2000) argued that "learning occurs in four ways: by elaborating existing frames of reference, by learning new frames of reference, by transforming points of view, or by transforming habits of mind" (p. 19). He explains that a frame of reference is a "meaning perspective" that has cognitive, affective and conative dimensions, the sum of assumptions and expectations through which we interpret our experiences and that offers the context for meaning-making. A frame of reference is composed of a habit of mind expressed through its resulting point of view. Finally, Mezirow (2009) defined TE as "learning that transforms problematic frames of reference to make them more inclusive, discriminating, reflective, open, and emotionally able to change" (Mezirow, 2009, p. 22). King (2005) explained that international learners transform from inveterate silent members to class leaders through learning opportunities such as critical thinking, research paper presentations, and case studies. All these assist the learners to use their knowledge base in order to make informed and conscious decisions and be able to reflect on their experiences. Harrison's (2008) conducted research implementing various case studies, participating in adult literacy programs. This research aimed at studying the impacts of literacy programs on the lives of the learners. Using an analytic tool, he reached a new theory called "metamorphosis". He concluded that there is a deep structural shift as participants reflected on their personal consciousness. This research was further used for other studies in TE, although it had the problem of making generalizations, which was due to the short sample size. Within this research, no quantitative data were offered to examine the correlation between TE and their educational background. Fullerton (2010) conducted a research aiming at exploring how TE was incorporated into the experience of college students who were internationally exposed to TE strategies which were engaged in a leadership development program. Although this research was limited to only adult learners in the United States, he concluded that age was strong correlating a factor for TE to occur and TE can and does occur independently. Schwartz (2013) conducted a study examining factors that promote TE experiences of college-level adult learners of foreign languages aiming at analyzing how college-level adult learners of foreign languages experience TE through educational and non-educational experiences. Due to the result of this research, 84.7% of participants did not have TE experiences while 15.3% of the participants had TE experiences. Although the participants attending this studyreported experiencing noneducational perspective of transformation, those who who employed self-reflection during the mentined process reprted experiencing educationally-related perspective of transformation. Stahl (2012) conducted a research on transformative professional development through the eyes of Mezirow and Guskey. This study investigated the process of professional development that valued teacher's personal background, included their present teaching context and focused on real-time applications was considered effective by teachers and thus more likely to effect change in their classroom pedagogy. Additionally, it was beneficial when professional development included time for participants to both personally reflect on and to dialog with other colleagues about their learning. Kalouptsi (2016) studied that transformative effect of learning about culture through foreign language acquisition on Greek's adult learning. Through that qualitative approach, she concluded a positive outcome revealing that transformative effect of learning is possible through language acquisition. Moreover, DA mode was investigated by Zhang (2008) for online EFL writing classes. The findings revealed that the DA greatly improved the learners' writing abilities by mediation on encouraging remarks, writing strategies, and giving reference materials by the teacher. These factors not only bring out creativity for the learners, but also result in harmonious cooperation and collaboration between them.
Focusing on DA side of the coin, Safa, Donyaei and Mohammadi conducted a research on the effect of interactionist versus interventionist DA on EFL learner's speaking skill. Hence, they studied 40 homogeneous Iranian EFL learners divided into DA group and Non-DA group. The analysis of the data revealed that interactionist model of DA had a statistically significant positive effect on Iranian EFL learners' speaking ability; meanwhile, interventionist model of DA had a statistically significant positive effect on Iranian EFL learners' speaking ability. The results also indicated that the three groups, namely, interactionist DA, interventionist DA, and non-DA had statistically significant effects on Iranian EFL learners' speaking ability with the interactionist DA group outperforming. In the same vein, Fahmy (2013) conducted a research on the effect of DA on adult learners of Arabic at an institute level. The results of comparing the different evaluations conducted in both the pre-and post-DA phase showed that the structural control of Arabic improved for all participants. DA instruction was practical and successful in making a difference for the participants' learning process. It reflected the success of the ILR-based rubrics in diagnosing accurately the students' inabilities whether in the interventionist-DA interviews or in the daily interactionist DA.
Mediation of meaning mentioned by Feuerstein (1979) as the main attributes of DA emphasize that the mediation and instruction would not be successful until it accompanies exploiting the relationships and making the connections clear. As Feuerstein says, the "episodic" grasp with which learners are faced, forces them to make a connection between the past and future projects.
In 2016, Ebadi researched the effect of DA on developing speaking abilities of EFL learners. Through Microgenetic and thematic analysis he explored a significant development in the participants' cognition and their movement toward further self-regulation.
In 2015, Kordjazi and Derakhshan studied the Implications of DA in Second/Foreign Language Contexts. According to the data analysis, they concluded that DA has helped education through gathering data about students' potential. It was also confirmed that it is able to adapt and accommodate students to the environment.
Son and Kim (2017) studied the potential of DA for English-speaking performance development.
The results of the current study revealed that mediator's mediational feedback and the learner's reciprocating leads to a decrease in the mediator's explicit feedback and an increase in the proactive moves of the learners. The data also showed that there is a positive relationship between the learner's developing linguistic profiles, dynamic reciprocating moves, and the cognitive and collaborative strategies for meaning-making.
Contrary to all these sporadic and separate studies; some on TE applications and some on DA (i.e. SCT), no single study could be traced to synthesizing the principles of these two theoretical paradigms in general and in a very single study on teaching language productive skills in particular in EFL educational context.

Design and context of the study
As far as this study is concerned, since the first research question aimed at examining the probable effects of integration of TE and DA on a certain group of learners compared to the group receiving TE, a quantitative approach was followed to answer this question. Based on the fact that learners could be randomly assigned to the classes, a true-experimental design of quantitative research was applied.

Participants
The participants were 105 Iranian mainly Persian university students of English major ranged from 20 to 25 years old who were selected based on convenient sampling but randomly organized in four classes. Given the fact that students initiate their studies at Iranian universitiesfor bachelor degreeat the age of 18 and there is no age restriction for the enrollment, the students entering the university might be from different age groups, which justifies the attendance of the 18-25 age range in this study. The candidates compete through a nation-wide high-stake Entrance Examination Test called "Konkour" which, to some extent, could be called a valid and reliable measure of language ability of the adult candidates and nullifies some selection concerns, though their language proficiency was additionally and specifically measured for the purpose of much more homogeneity in this study. For the purpose of the current study, the students were first conveniently selected from among those who had enrolled for the academic year of 2016-2107.The experimental group consisted of two classes and 55 learners, whereas the control group consisted of 50 learners who, following the initial convenient sampling, were randomly divided into the experimental and control groups.

Instruments
Multiple instruments including pre-test of speaking, pre-test of writing, posttest of writing and posttest of speaking, were used for the purpose of this study. The speaking section of IELTS Test was used as the pretest in order to test their speaking proficiency. In claiming primary use of the general proficiency model, the IELTS speaking sub-test asserts the notion that there is some varying technically analyzable, but fundamentally indivisible, body of language knowledge within each test-taker, and therefore, individuals can be ranked on the basis of this knowledge. Therefore, the test strives to discover proficiency through performance (Quaid, 2018). Additionally, the IELTS sub-tests were employed given the experience of close working with the participants and full knowledge of their language proficiency level. The speaking test was marked by using the IELTS speaking band descriptors and by assigning a mark to each descriptor (Appendix A). Meanwhile, the students' writing abilities were assessed before the treatment. The writing assessment was used to assess the fundamental writing skills and measured the ability to write effectively. The topic of essay was "In cashless society, people use more credit cards. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this phenomenon? And it was the same for all students and it was scored based on how effectively the writing communicated the whole message. The score was based on ability to express, organize, and support opinions and ideas according to the IELTS band score description (Appendix B).
The posttest included speaking tests were recorded as well as writing tests. Posttest of writing included a topic as presented in IELTS writing test and the students were supposed to write an essay on the given topic individually within 40 min. The topic was "The current trend in education is to move away from traditional exams and instead have continuous assessment over the school year. What do you think of this trend?" The writing assessments of both groups were the same concerning the type of questions and topics. The same types of questions were also asked from experimental and control groups to collect data on their speaking performances. In order to estimate the reliability of the test, it was piloted again on another group of 30 university students. The piloting sample had similar features as the three groups. The reliability level was 0.70 as shown in a Cronbach's alpha coefficient.
As the participants were at the level of self-expression in English, so the speaking section of IELTS Test was used as the pretest to test their speaking proficiency. The speaking test was marked by using the IELTS speaking band descriptors (Appendix B) and by assigning a mark to each descriptor. Meanwhile, the students' writing ability was assessed before the treatment. They were required to write an essay on the given subject and their writing performance was measured through IELTS Writing band score (Appendix A) to assess their ability to express, organize, and support opinions. The topic given to the participants was of general knowledge type in order to decrease the effect of topic influence on their writing.
In order to check the reliability of the writing and speaking pretest, they were piloted with a group of 30 university students besides the three target groups of the study. The piloting sample had similar features as those of the three groups. Also, the writings were assessed by two university professors to ensure their inter-rater reliability.
3.3.1. Inter-rater reliability of pretests and posttests of writing and speaking Table 1 and Table 2 display the results of the Pearson correlations run to estimate the inter-rater reliability of the two raters who rated the participants' performance on pretests and posttests of writing and speaking. Accordingly, there were significant agreements between the two raters on; -Pretest of writing (r (103) =.706, representing a large effect size, p = .000), and -Posttest of writing (r (103) = .578, representing a large effect size, p = .000).
Based on these results displayed in Table 2 it can be concluded that there were significant agreements between the two raters on; -Pretest of speaking (r (103) = .558, representing a large effect size, p = .000), and -Posttest of speaking (r (103) = .657, representing a large effect size, p = .000).

Data collection procedure
At first, the selected participants were interviewed separately on an assigned topic. This interview was based on IELTS exam speaking test which took about 15 min. They were also given the topic "In cashless society, people use more credit cards. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this phenomenon? They were asked to write an essay. The purpose was to elicit information regarding the current level of speaking and writing and to compare with the posttest data in order to evaluate the impact of the treatment on the participants.
In the second stage, the treatment was implemented into two different groups of students. One group (including two classes) received the treatment in writing and speaking skills based on TE. After the pretest and during the course, the instructor followed TE teaching strategies, namely, as (but not limited to): • Associating the learner's goals to a predefined larger goals Moreover, the experimental group of students was given treatment based on the integration of TE and DA. This group got the benefit of TE as the first group. The difference in the treatment lied in the assessment procedure, which was DA. The treatment took 16 sessions.
The stages of TE included assigning the individuals in independent teams where they could communicate ideas and knowledge along with responsibilities exchange. The second stage was making students involved in the content of the course being taught during certain sessions of the course. In the third stage, the students' time for classroom discussions was expanded in order to develop their interactions. The final stage within the procedure of this research was developing assessments which themselves were learning opportunities; in other words, they were exposed to new challenges with which they could gain more knowledge on the subject area. The assessment in the experimental group was not only a test format but also ongoing DA of the learner's progress on their transformational process. The point in the experimental group revolved around mediating the learners to overcome their problems dynamically and critically. The mediation offered by the instructor during the semester was per session and while the students were assigned into different groups. At each session of the instruction, at first, the teacher taught the topics of each session. The focus of the teaching materials regarding speaking was on parts of speech, fluency and task achievement. Meanwhile, the focus of the teaching material regarding writing was on parts of speech, cohesion and coherence, topic sentence, and task achievement. After the instruction, learners were assigned into groups. Based on the tasks students were given to complement within the group, either speaking or writing tasks, they were challenged as to receiving new viewpoints; These challenging moments were the times that instructor mediated the group members through the predefined scale of medication moving from implicitly to explicitly. In this study, instruction and assessment occurred simultaneously in that the teachersas mediatorpromote development by offering assistance to a student while concurrently assessing the student's abilities. The instructor commenced by asking the learners to independently correct the errors and ended up with the provision of correct patterns and examples.
There are some critical points in assisting learners in the experimental group in all stages. First, the assistance provided for the participants was gradual so that implicit help was offered initially and increasingly became more explicit as required by the learner. Second, help was contingent so that it was only offered when needed. Specifically, explicit forms of assistance were only provided when implicit forms were insufficient. Examples of such explicit forms included providing the correct form, or some explanations for using the correct form and even examples of correct pattern. Third, help was rendered through dialogue through which the teacher and learner co-constructed the intended meaning.
Multiple TE strategies were employed during the research. Among these strategies were creating opportunities for the learners to think in more sophisticated ways, encouraging critical thinking and giving meaningful assignments. These assignments included information, reasoning and opinion gap activities. For example, two students might have different schedules, but they want to find time to get together to work on their course project. The students were allowed to request information, and to negotiate the meaning whenever there were misunderstandings. The students were also challenged to solve group initiative problems. Many of these challenging activities were problem-solving which required critical reflection on the suggestions made by the group to solve the problems. During all the tasks given to the students to fulfill, the instructors took note of the reaction of the participants to the activities and topics presented to them.
Then, the participants received a posttest of writing and speaking. Posttest of writing included a topic as presented in IELTS writing test and the students were supposed to write an essay on the given topic individually within 40 min. The topic was "The current trend in education is to move away from traditional exams and instead have a continuous assessment over the school year. What do you think of this trend?" The writing assessments of both groups were the same regarding the type of questions and topics. The same types of questions were also asked from both groups to collect data on their speaking performances.

Testing normality assumptions
Prior to deciding on the statistical approach, the collected data were first checked in terms of parametric test assumptions. Parametric tests assume four assumptions to be met including: "1) dependent variable, are interval scored or strongly continuous, 2) the data are normally distributed, 3) the distribution can be estimated in the population from which the respective samples have been drawn, and 4) the observations are independent" (Hatch & Lazarton, 1991, p. 237-238). Given the assumptions 1, 3, and 4 which are met, the data were checked in terms of normality. Table 1 displays the results of skewness and kurtosis and their ratios of their standard errors. The results indicated two different pictures for the pretests and post-tests' scores of both skills as that the absolute values of these ratios for the pre-tests of both groups were higher than 1.96, while they were lower for the post-tests. That was why there was no choice other than resorting to the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test for the pre-tests' scores but independent samples t-test for the post-tests' scores; pre-tests scores violating one of the normality assumptions but post-tests' scores meeting them all! [A motive for more research in statistics as the subject's performance may change the nature of the data]. Additionally, homogeneity measures of the groups on the pre-tests were also calculated. It should be noted that the assumptions of lack of univariate and multivariate outliers were also checked. Please refer to Appendix C.

Homogeneity measures based on speaking pretest
A non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was run to compare the integrated and unintegrated groups' means on pretest of speaking in order to prove that they were homogenous in terms of their speaking ability prior to the administration of the treatments. The Mann-Whitney U test was run because as displayed in Table 3 the distribution of scores violated the assumption of normality on pretest of speaking. Table 4 displays the median scores and mean ranks for the two groups on pretest of speaking. Based on these results it can be concluded that the integrated (Mdn = 5) and unintegrated (Mdn = 4.75) groups had fairly close median scores on pretest of speaking.
Moreover, Table 5 displays the results of the Mann-Whitney U test. The results (Z = −.888, p = .374, Glass Rank Biserial Correlation Coefficient 1 = .096 representing a weak effect size) indicated that there was not any significant difference between the integrated and unintegrated groups' median scores on pretest of speaking ( Figure 1). Thus, it can be concluded that the two groups were homogenous in terms of their speaking ability prior to the administration of the treatment.

Homogeneity measures of groups on the pretest of writing
A non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test was run to compare the integrated and unintegrated groups' means on pretest of writing in order to prove that they were homogenous in terms of their writing ability prior to the administration of the treatments. The Mann-Whitney U test was run because as displayed in Table 3 the distribution of scores violated the assumption of normality on pretest of writing. Table 6 displays the median scores and mean ranks for the two groups on pretest of writing. Based on these results it can be concluded that the integrated (Mdn = 4.5) and unintegrated (Mdn = 4.75) groups had fairly close median scores on pretest of writing. Table 7 displays the results of the Mann-Whitney U test. The results (Z = −.201, p = .840, Glass Rank Biserial Correlation Coefficient = .021 representing a weak effect size) indicated that there was not any significant difference between the integrated and unintegrated groups' median scores   on pretest of writing ( Figure 2). Thus, it can be concluded that the two groups were homogenous in terms of their writing ability prior to the administration of the treatment.

Testing the research hypotheses
As already stated and given the normality nature of the post-tests' scores of both skills, independentsamples t-tests were run to compare the integrated and unintegrated groups' means on first the posttest of speaking (Figure 3) in order to probe the first null-hypothesis and that of the writing skill to probe the second research question.

Testing the first null-hypothesis
The first null-hypothesis stated that the integration of TE with DA did not significantly affect learners speaking more significantly than TE did. Table 8   The results of the independent t-test (t (103) = 4.09, p = .000, r = .369 representing a moderate effect size) (Table 9) indicates that the integrated group significantly outperformed the unintegrated group on posttest of speaking. Thus, the first null-hypothesis as "integration of TE with DA did not significantly affect learners speaking more significantly than TE did" was rejected.
It should also be noted that the assumption of homogeneity of variances was met (Levene's F = .001, p = .988). That was why the first row of Table 9, i.e. "Equal variances assumed" was reported.

Testing the second minor null-hypothesis
The second null-hypothesis stated that the integration of TE with DA did not significantly affect learners' writing more significantly than TE did. An independent-samples t-test was run to compare the integrated and unintegrated groups' mean on posttest of writing in order to probe the second null-hypothesis. Table 10 displays the two groups' means on posttest of writing. The results indicated that the integrated group (M = 6.25, SD = .517) had a slightly higher mean than the unintegrated group (M = 6.01, SD = .490) on posttest of writing ( Figure 4).
The results of the independent t-test (t (103) = 2.39, p = .019, r = .229 representing a weak effect size) (Table 11) indicates that the integrated group significantly outperformed the unintegrated group on posttest of writing. Thus, the second null-hypothesis as "integration of TE with DA did not significantly affect learners writing more significantly than TE did" was rejected, although the results should be interpreted cautiously due to the weak effect size value of .229.
It should also be noted that the assumption of homogeneity of variances was met (Levene's F = 1.94, p = .166). That was why the first row of Table 11, i.e. "Equal variances assumed" was reported.

Discussion and conclusion
This research aimed to investigate whether the integration of TE and DA can have any significant effect on EFL learners' productive skills; writing and speaking compared to TE. Based on the results of the t-test, there were significant differences between control and experimental groups at the learners' speaking and writing scores. Hence, it was concluded that students receiving the treatment of the integration of DA and TE performed better in their speaking and writing compared to the group which benefited from TE. Based on the findings, the posttest scores in the experimental groups in both speaking and writing skills were significantly higher than their scores in the pretest.  The outcomes indicated that the learners' paragraphs and speaking skill enhanced in terms of both clarity and content. The results revealed that almost all the learners who have participated in the study had a problem in the essay writing but improved their writings by experiencing the mediation. The mediation presented to the learners was different in each of them since the difficulty overcoming and struggling the tasks was different in different learners. During the mediation, some of the participants were able to enhance their writings since they could identify their own mistakes or errors. By comparing the pretest and posttest paragraphs written by the students, it was identified that mediation was successful most of all in the syntactic section and less than all in the spelling section. The reason behind this outcome is that in the case of syntax, the number of grammatical errors of the writings were limited to some common difficulties among the essays and as to the spelling the domain of the words to be learned was unlimited.
The findings obtained in this research are in line with the findings by Knodel (1997). He probed the effectiveness of the mediated learning experience and the graduated prompt (two kinds of DA approaches) on the assessment of composition writing of the poor writers with a learning disability and without a learning disability learners. The findings of the research showed that graduate prompt intervention was effectively beneficial. On the other hand, the learners who did not improve through graduated prompt received the mediated learning intervention. Moreover, DA mode was investigated by Zhang (2008) for online EFL writing classes. The findings revealed that the DA greatly improved the learners' writing abilities through mediation provided by the teachers by the means of encouraging remarks, writing strategies, and giving reference materials. The mentioned factors brought out creativity along with cooperation and collaboration between learners.
The findings of the present study were also in line with the findings of Ahmadi Safa et al. (2015) who studied the effect of DA on speaking abilities of the Iranian EFL learners and concluded that DA had a statistically significant positive effect on Iranian EFL learners' speaking ability.
As Duvall (2008) asserted, regardless of the mediation offered through DA, the important factor, which is very effective, is the ability of the teachers who engage the learners in speaking skills via cooperative activities. This enables learners to co-construct their ZPD.   The findings of the present study, which are in line with those by Ebadi (2016), Hill andSabet (2009), andSon andKim (2017), revealed that DA over time had a significant positive impact on the participants' learning process. The frequency of errors, mediations provided by the mediator, the participants' responsiveness to the mediation and the types of their private speech were regarded as an index for assessing their progress in speaking skills.
Furthermore, it has been revealed by the current study that the integration of DA and TE is an effective means through which the performance of the students might be described. Hence, DA needs to be used for the learners failing to perform properly on the standardized instruments. This is rooted in the fact that mediation varies according to each individual. Moreover, the findings were supported to the findings of the research done by Kalouptsi (2016). She studied the effect of TE and learning about a culture of learning a foreign language. Research delivered positive outcomes showed evidence that the transformative effect of learning about a culture through language acquisition is indeed possible.
Results of the present study indicated that the integration of TE and DA can influence both speaking and writing proficiency of the EFL learners at the university level. It can be concluded that not only this integration assists the writing ability of the learners, but also it is very influential in enhancing speaking proficiency.
As Vygotsky (1978) argued, the most effective instruction leads to human development. In the circumstances where the learners are exposed to a challenge beyond their current cognitive level, the expectation of the learners develops. In other words, when teachers convince the learners that their capabilities are much higher than their expectations, learners perform noticeably better to reach higher levels. Stremmel and Fu (1993) argued that during establishing DA, teachers playing the role of the mediator, have critical encouraging effects on the provision of support leading to learning and development. They approved that when the teachers do not demand high or employ less demonstration, the most effective teaching through the assessment happens including the equal partnership; which is in line with the findings of this research within which the role of the mediator is facilitated through integration with TE.
The other major finding of the current study is the role of the teacher as the cause of challenges for the students to experience TE which is mostly facilitated while being integrated with DA. As King (2005) discussed, while instructors can provide strategies and opportunities for transformative learning to occur, it is up to the learner to change or not. As Mezirow pointed out, "One cannot become emancipated through indoctrination" (1991a, p. 88). An individual alone chooses how he/she perceives and makes meaning of the world and his/her experiences within it. Instructors should not force this process, but rather should provide nurturing challenges and support toward this vision. Only in this way can the promise of transformative learning be realized. As King (2005) observed, there are no guarantees of transformative learning outcomes, only opportunities. The life experiences of students must lead them to intellectual and emotional readiness, meet conditional thresholds, and they must be psychologically willing. So, in addition to the nature of the approach implemented in this study, the learners' willingness can also be among the factors determining the results achieved.

Implications and further recommendations
An important educational implication from this study could be for educational administrators who should take the probable impacts of language learning and the context of the learning into considerations because learners might transfer them to their academic life. According to the results, there could be counseling sessions at each academic level through which students are allowed to discuss their challenges and critical situations that have faced during their academic life.
Another educational implication might be that faculties in higher education could practice theories in the classroom as documented in the quantitative findings of the current study. Faculties might integrate activities such as classroom discussions or projects, critical thinking and role-play in their teaching plans within which the learners will find the opportunity to participate in the learning process. Meanwhile, the learners could be familiar with the concepts of different techniques of teaching as findings from the study show that classroom activities were highly associated with experiencing TE of learners.
The present study attempted to integrate DA and TE to examine the probable effect on the productive skills of the learners. This study was limited to DA that is the mediated learning experience. Thus, future studies can consider the various domains of DA concerning the classroom. Addressing the process of learning and teaching in a DA approach is needed for future research in order to shift the focus from the performance to the type and amount of intervention required. This study considered only the intermediate proficiency level learners. Future research can investigate the impact of the integration of DA and TE on other levels of proficiency. Within the current research, all the participants were university students of English. It would be fine to investigate whether there are any similarities and differences between the perceptions of the teachers and learners at other educational levels.

Appendix C Testing Lack of Univariate Outlier
The standardized scores (Z-scores) were computed for pretests and posttests of speaking and writing. Table C1 displays the descriptive statistics for the Z-scores for the pretests and posttests of speaking and writing. None of the variables had a Z-score higher than ± 3. That is to say, the data did not have any univariate outliers.
To check multivariate outliers, the Mahalanobis Distances were computed. The Mahalanobis Distances were compared with the chi-square critical value of 20.51 at.001 levels of significance for five dependent variables (Tabachnick and Fidell 2014). Table C2 displays the descriptive statistics for the Mahalanobis Distances. The maximum observed value of 14.27 was lower than 20.51 indicating that the present data did not have any multivariate outliers.