Formative Assessment And English Learning Strategies

The study mainly focuses on the role of formative assessment in language learning strategies. Assessment, as one of the most important key factors in the education system, is believed to have great effect in students'learning process, while learning strategies are considered to be another. Evidence shows that the application of assessment plays a positive role in the promotion of students'language learning strategies.So as to testify the effectiveness of formative assessment application in the promotion of students'learning strategies in vocational college, the author has conducted a 20-week study on 76 freshmen in Sichuan College of Architectural Technology. The experiment intends to explore the following questions:1) Which types of language learning strategies are employed more by vocational college students?2) Which strategy/strategies will be more influenced by formative assessment in learning strategies?3) Can this sort of influence lead to better academic performance of students in English course?During the process, tools such as questionnaire, achievement test, self-assessment, classroom observation and peer-assessment are employed. And all the collected data, both quantitative and qualitative, are consequently analyzed with SPSS.The result shows that the application of formative assessment is mostly effective in the students' adoption of affective strategy, but within the limited time, academic performance of students in treatment class with formative assessment makes no significant improvement compared to control class.