An Action Research On Helping College Students Of Special Majors Become Autonomous Learners Through Formative Assessment

With fast development of our higher education, the number of students with special programs( art, design and physical education) is increasing rapidly. Because of their specialties, English teaching, for a long time, has not been paid attention to. Now as the disciplines and the students' number have expanded, demands for strengthening and improving English teaching for students of special majors have become stronger and stronger. So how to make reasonable curriculum, how to adopt proper teaching and assessing method according to these students' characteristics has become a crucial issue.This thesis is an action research report on how to help students with special majors become autonomous learners through formative assessment. It has been fulfilled for one year in a sophomore class in the School of Physical Education at East China Jiaotong University. The biggest problem the investigator meets during teaching is the students' passive attitude and methods towards their learning and the unrealistic test content and mode. From practice, the author realizes that it is not enough just to change teaching method. The traditional mechanical system of teaching and assessment will prevent students from being autonomous learners. So the author tries to engage the assessment for process instead of final result to foster students' ability and sense of autonomous learning.Firstly the thesis explains the definition of formative assessment, then it describes the detailed activities designed and their process of implementation. Many real teaching cases have been provided in the thesis. They break through the traditional concepts and try to put the learners in equal position. In the action activities, students' need and their progress will be found in time. Teacher will reflect the teaching efficiency and adjust his teaching or assessing strategies accordingly so as to improve students' learning interest, develop their automatics and motivation. During this process of mutual communication and interaction, both the teacher and students will benefit from each other.