The Application Of Formative Assessment Strategies To Aiding Students In EFL In Vocational College-An Action Research

Educational evaluation is one of the three major subjects of modern educational science and research. It is a vital part of course instruction. According to their different functions in the process of instruction, assessment and evaluation can be divided into two types: summative assessment and formative assessment. Confined by the traditional concepts on education and talents, English teachers tend to apply summative assessment to judge learners' language learning competence and teachers' teaching effects in EFL while formative assessment has been neglected. As the trend has come at a time when field of EFL is witnessing a notable shift from structural teaching approach to communicative, humanistic and learner-centred approaches, English teachers recognize that the traditional pen and paper examination is incapable of estimating the diversity of skills, knowledge, processes and strategies, etc. that combine to determine student progress. Therefore, it is badly necessary to establish a new assessment system which can be consistent with the new teaching approaches and focuses on the learners' dynamic learning process in order to promote their over-all development rather than on the static grade.At the same time, the Ministry of Education has been carrying out a new round assessment-focused educational reform at present since 2001. College English education benefits a lot from it and College English Curriculum Requirements (Requirements hereafter) has come into being. The Requirements provides the reform of College English assessment system with theoretical and practical recommendations. The Requirements proposes the establishment of a diversity-based assessment model, which differs from the traditional mono-levelled, test-based one. The new assessment system is supposed to guide College English teaching efficiently by combining formative assessment and summative assessment, especially, strengthening formative assessment and stressing the assessment of learners' ability to use English in an all-round way. Thus to the college especially our technical college students who have been the traditional assessment system's failure, the formative assessment may give them new hope and trigger their motivation, interests, self-esteem.However, formative assessment is relatively new to researchers and teachers of English in China, so teachers where formative assessment has been implemented as an assessment innovation have some fears about the introduction of this formative...