A Study Of Formative Assessment In EFL Teaching

Since R.W.Tyler, the well-known American educator, first put forward the concept of "educational assessment" in the 1930s, research on educational assessment has attracted researchers' widespread attention both in China and abroad.Assessment is commonly classified as summative assessment and formative assessment in terms of time and function. Summative assessment has always been the main method of classroom instruction while formative assessment has been badly and chronically neglected in the past. But, there has been much criticism of the validity and reliability of summative assessment from researchers. Presently, modern English teaching highlights the application of formative assessment which puts great emphasis on the process, development and promotion of students' learning. It also serves as an important part of the current curriculum reform. Much evidence shows that it has great vitality as it lays emphasis on the diversity of the agents, contents, ways, methods, tools, etc.To our great delight, a large amount of achievements in this field have been achieved in China as well as abroad. However, much of researchers' concerns and discussions of formative assessment in our country still remains at elementary teaching level. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to make further researches on formative assessment of EFL students from aspects of theory and practice.