The Integrated Application Of Formative Assessment And Summative Assessment In Senior Vocational School ELT

Educational assessment is a process that uses a practical scientific means to value the teaching activities, teaching process and teaching results by collecting and analysis information systematically according to certain educational value or goals and provides basis for promoting educational quality and decision. Educational evaluation is one of the three major subjects of modern educational science and research and also a very important and necessary part in the English teaching and learning process. The traditional assessment-- summative assessment appears to offer limited information about an individual student's reasoning processes, an important factor in the perspective by the influence of one-sided opinion of the chasing the proportion of the graduates. To a certain extent, summative assessment ignores the assessment on students'creativity and subjectivity. It has led our English teaching and learning into an odd"examination-oriented education"circle. Our nation's Compulsory Education Reform Essentials of English Curriculum proposes that the current assessment mechanism be reformed; a new assessment system which accords with the demands of quality education should be established to promote constant development of the students, the unceasing progress of teaching and learning and steady improvement of the curriculum. Now the assessment reform experiments, which focus on formative assessment, have been carried out in many primary schools and middle schools all over the country.In the language testing literature, formative assessment is usually contrasted with summative assessment on the grounds that the former is intended to feed back into the teaching and learning process while the latter reports on the outcomes of learning (Bachman, 1990:6-61).Summative assessment focusing on the product of language learning is an assessment which looks backward. It is the assessment of learning. Formative assessment focusing on process of language learning is an assessment which looks forward and emphasizes development. It is the assessment for learning. But now there are no effective and practical formative assessment models in the EFL(English as a Foreign Language) classroom setting.? The present paper explores and discusses the integrated application of formative assessment and summative assessment in Senior Vocational School ELT from the theoretical to the practical level of the EFL classroom. First, the author reviewed the development of educational assessment and introduced the present situation of educational assessment in China. Then the definitions, features and ways of summative assessment and formative assessment are introduced respectively. For the experimental part, the author gives a detailed explanation. In this experiment, summative assessment and formative assessment are used integratedly in order to fulfill the active goals. For the formative assessment, both e-portfolios and paper portfolios are used, in which there are pieces of students'work results of the examinations, self-assessment, peer assessment and teachers'assessment etc. The results of the experiment are analyzed carefully and new questions are brought forward. At last, probable methods are suggested to make preparations for the future study.