A Study On English Classroom Speaking Formative Assessment Initiated By Students In Vocational Colleges

Assessment is an important part of the education system.With the progress of educational reform,more and more priorities have been paid to formative assessment.Compared with summative assessment,formative assessment places more emphases on students' learning process and the effect of assessment to assist teachers and learners.The teaching objective of English curriculum for vocational colleges is to cultivate students' basic English application ability in the workplace,the listening and speaking skills in particular.The development of English speaking ability is attracting more and more attention in Teaching English as a Foreign Language(TEFL)course of vocational colleges.The assessment of English speaking proficiency in TEFL has always been made by teachers.Insufficient attention has been paid to the feedback effects of assessment.Therefore,it is necessary to carry out English classroom speaking formative assessment initiated by students in vocational colleges,highlighting the dominant role of students in promoting the efficiency of TEFL speaking course.The research adopts quantitative analysis and qualitative induction to explore the following questions.1.Is speaking formative assessment initiated by students helpful to improve students' English speaking proficiency?2.Does speaking formative assessment initiated by students help students improve self-assessment ability of speaking? Are students' self-assessment abilities in pronunciation and delivery,communication strategies,vocabulary and grammar,ideas and organization significantly improved?3.Does speaking formative assessment initiated by students exert positive effects on students' emotive attitudes,communicative competence,autonomous and cooperative learning ability in the acquisition of English speaking?The findings of this research are as follows: first,speaking formative assessment initiated by students is helpful to improve students' English speaking proficiency.Theimprovement of the results of assessment by the teacher indicates that students' performance in speaking activities has been improved in the process of formative assessment.Second,speaking formative assessment initiated by students is helpful to improve students' self-assessment ability of speaking.The results of students' self-assessment and the results of assessment by the teacher generally tend to be consistent.The differences between students' self-assessment and assessment by the teacher in communication strategies,vocabulary and grammar,ideas and organization are significantly reduced,but there are still some differences between students' self-assessment and assessment by the teacher in pronunciation and delivery.It shows that the accuracy of students' self-assessment has been improved.Students' self-assessment abilities in communication strategies,vocabulary and grammar,ideas and organization have been significantly improved.However,students' self-assessment abilities in pronunciation and delivery have not been significantly improved.Third,speaking formative assessment initiated by students has positive effects on students' emotive attitudes,communicative competence,autonomous and cooperative learning ability in spoken English learning.In particular,it has a significant effect on the improvement of the self-confidence in spoken English acquisition of the students of dissatisfactory English speaking proficiency.The results of questionnaire survey and interview show that speaking formative assessment initiated by students can obviously promote learning and communication.Students have a high degree of recognition and adaption of this assessment method.The results of self-assessment of the students of dissatisfactory English speaking proficiency have been improved obviously,indicating that their self-confidence of learning has been enhanced.