A Comparative Study Of Formative And Summative Assessments In Pronunciation Teaching Of English Major

Education assessment is indispensable in teaching practice. An effective assessment system can not only facilitate student learning, but improve teacher instruction so as to upgrade teaching quality. Summative assessment is the primary assessment mode in current pronunciation course of English majors. Therefore, the present thesis aims to explore whether formative assessment can facilitate student pronunciation achievement, enhance student desire, attitude and motivation in learning pronunciation, compared with summative assessment.The author implemented an experiment among randomly chosen52freshmen coming from two classes, which were defined as Experimental Group and Control Group, in English Department of East China Normal University. The experiment lasted for a whole semester. Before the experiment, all the students were required to take a questionnaire and a pre-test. During the experiment, the author implemented formative assessment in Experimental Group, including the methods of interview, classroom observation, teacher assessment, peer-assessment and portfolios. After the experiment, both Experimental Group and Control Group were asked to do the questionnaire again and a post-test.With the application of SPSS, the author analyzed data of Experimental Group and Control Group from the results of pre-and-post tests, questionnaires and portfolios, etc. It indicated that compared with summative assessment, formative assessment is more effective in facilitating students’ pronunciation achievement, benefiting them in forming stronger desire and motivation, more positive attitude in learning pronunciation.The outcome of the experiment, in a sense, provides a basis for the reform of English Pronunciation course. Through application of formative assessment, the quality of pronunciation instruction will be upgraded.