The Application Of Formative Assessment To Oral English Teaching In Higher Vocational Colleges

The term formative assessment was first introduced by Scriven in 1967, which is a product of the fourth generation of educational assessment. Many researchers have conducted substantial studies on different aspects of formative assessment both at home and abroad. It has gained its popularity both in theory and in practice. However, scholars highlight its application to primary and middle school rather than the college, especially the vocational colleges. As the development of globalization and China's opening up, vocational colleges receive much more attention than ever, demanding students to master both written and spoken English. For many years, teaching evaluation had been defined as teaching measurement, before confined to teaching test. The teachers have less improvement with respect to evaluation of the students' proficiency of the oral English. However, for the students, the test examination-oriented model reduced the confidence and enthusiasm of the students to improve their oral English. And the traditional teaching evaluation was left behind to foster learner's independent learning ability. Under such situation, the author tries to use the formative assessment to carry out one experiment so as to improve students' oral English ability, and to stimulate their interest in oral English learning. The author also wants to learn about whether they can cooperate better after the experiment.In this experiment, 2 classes at the same level were chosen from Rizhao Polytechnic, namely, one experimental class and one control class with about 50 students each. The experiment was carried out from September, 2010 to January, 2011. Many tools and methods were employed in the research, including questionnaires, observations, self-assessment, peer-assessment, teacher-assessment, dialogue journals, interview and so on. An oral English test was carried out after the experiment, and the findings of the results were compared with the same software SPSS. The two paired sample T-test results showed both statistically significant difference, which meant both the classes had made much progress in oral English, but the extent of the progress of the experimental class was much higher than that of the control class. The author also made a comparison of pre-questionnaire and post-questionnaire, from which the author found that the students increased their interest and confidence to speak English, and their cooperative awareness was also improved.This thesis is made up of six chapters. In the first chapter, the background information, the significance and purpose of the study are put forward. The second chapter mainly focuses on literature about formative assessment, such as, the definition, the characters of formative assessment, meanwhile the theories related are also illustrated in this chapter. The third chapter tells about the connection of formative assessment and oral English learning, and the tools, methods used .The fourth chapter deals with the experiment process. It illustrates how to apply formative assessment into oral English learning. Chapter five shows how to analyze the data from the experiment. And the major findings and limitation of the research are illustrated in chapter six.