An Empirical Study Of Formative Assessment In English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

Writing teaching is an important part of English teaching,and writing assessment methods affect students’ writing learning to a great extent.In the traditional English writing class,the summative assessment occupies a dominant position.However,this kind of assessment only focuses on the result,which is not conducive to stimulating students’ interest and initiative in English learning in the long run.Formative assessment is different from summative assessment in that it is the assessment of students’ learning process,which emphasizes the interaction and communication between the teacher and students.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of formative assessment in junior high school English writing on junior high school students’ English writing ability and attitude.And this study attempts to address the following two questions:(1)what effects does formative assessment have on junior high school students’ English writing ability?(2)What effects does formative assessment have on junior high school students’ writing attitude?In this study,a total of 108 students in two classes of a junior high school in Xuzhou are selected as the research subjects,and the survey tools are tests,questionnaires and interviews.During the four-month experiment,formative assessment is applied in the experimental class while traditional assessment method is used in the control class.All data are input into SPSS23.0 and Excel for calculation and analysis.According to the results of the data analysis,there are two main findings in this research: 1)Students’ writing ability in the experimental class has greatly improved.Quantitative data show that the post-test mean score of the control class is 64.8,while that of the experimental class is 74.35.The significance level is 0.000,p=0.000<0.05,which indicates that there is a significant difference between the experimental class and the control class.It also indicates that formative assessment can truly improve junior high school students’ English writing ability.Meanwhile,according to the writing rubrics,students’ scores in the experimental class rise from 17.5 to 23 points in content(the total score is 30 points),13 to 25.3 points in structure(the total score is30 points),18.5 to 22.5 points in language(the total score is 30 points),6.5 to 7.8points in handwriting(the total score is 10 points);2)Students in the experimental class have significantly improved their attitudes towards English writing.Qualitative data show that students’ interest in writing has increased from 27.8% to 50% and confidence in writing has increased from 38.9% to 57.4%.The number of students who have developed good writing habits rises from 37.1% to 64.8%.To conclude,this study indicates that formative assessment is of guiding significance to junior high school English writing teaching,which also means that English teachers should pay more attention to formative assessment in the teaching process.