An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Formative Assessment On Vocabulary Learning

This thesis is an empirical study from the perspective of Formative Assessment Theory and Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) model of Zimmerman B.J.. The action research is based on the background of EFL vocabulary instructions for non-English majors mainly through a training program and questionnaire. The purpose is to investigate how to improve learners’ vocabulary performance by EFL teaching design and to cultivate their self-regulation learning under the guidance of formative assessment. It attempts to explore the effect of formative assessment and on vocabulary learning performance. Besides, it also aims to find out the correlations between the use of vocabulary self-regulation strategy and the vocabulary proficiency.The study was undertaken from February to July in2012in East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), and66freshmen of non-English majors from two intact classes participated in this study. One class served as the experimental class (EC) and received an intervention program on the basis of Formative Assessment Theory and Self-Regulated Strategy Learning (SRL) model. The other class was the controlled class (CC), which only received the routine vocabulary instructions. The students completed the questionnaires and vocabulary performance at the end of the study.The major findings suggest the participants from the EC make more progress than those from the CC in vocabulary performance, revealing the fact that the vocabulary instruction based on the formative assessment theory is more effective than the traditional teaching method in terms of vocabulary outcomes. Meanwhile, formative assessment has different impacts on females and males in their vocabulary performance. Compared with the CC, the increase in score of male students from EC is higher than female students, which shows that formative assessment has a greater effect on males than on females. Moreover, the teaching skills under the direction of formative assessment have an effect on students’ non-intellectual factors. In particular, interaction in class and assessment out of class will bring different pressure to students with positive influence.This study shows a new insight into the cultivation of language learners’ self-regulation learning strategies. At the end of this paper, a few specific strategies are put forward about how to enhance students’ self-regulated capabilities and to make more improvement on the design of teaching skills and methods with the hope of supplying tentative suggestions to future vocabulary teaching.