Formative Assessment In College English Teaching

Education assessment is an important part of English teaching. Formative assessment, as one kind in assessment system, can remedy defects of summative assessment. Its purpose is to offer feedback and information in time through daily assessment so as to improve English teaching and learning. It can be combined with summative assessment that aims to assess learning results, and then to make better effect.This thesis is a research on the application of formative assessment in college English teaching. The experiment intends to reveal its influence to students and explore how to use it to improve students'listening, speaking, reading and writing abilities all around, and conducts a semester experimental study involving 85 non-English majors in grade two in Northwest A&F University. Through portfolio, observation, daily records, and combining with summative assessment, students'listening, reading and writing abilities are assessed; through interview, group activity and questionnaire, their oral English ability is assessed. The information and data collected from the experiment is analyzed. The results prove that the students in the experimental class have great achievement in listening, reading, writing and speaking abilities.This research demonstrates that formative assessment is a very effective assessing method. It is easy to be operated and can be applied whenever necessary, accompanying the whole teaching process. Formative assessment can help students supervise their own learning, adjust learning strategies and clear target. It can also reduce students'anxiety so as to increase their confidence. What is more, formative assessment can cultivate their automatic learning and creativity.