Formative Assessment In Developing Learner Autonomy In TEFL

This study is initiated by College English Curriculum Requirements (The Ministry of Education, China, 2004) which aims to improve the English proficiency of college students and foster their learner autonomy in college English teaching and learning.Aiming at the content of College English Curriculum Requirements, this paper tries to explore an effective way of enhancing learner autonomy and improve learner's competence in EFL. Based on the essence of learner autonomy and the role of formative assessment in teaching and learning, it is argued that formative assessment is a feasible way of stimulating learner autonomy and promote learner's achievement in EFL learning, because formative assessment can provide the teachers and students the timely feedback about their performance in EFL teaching and learning, and thus can help students reflect on their learning performance and adjust their behavior in EFL learning, which in turn cultivate students' learner autonomy.In order to see the feasibility of formative assessment and its role in cultivating learner autonomy in EFL teaching and learning as well as its impact on English language proficiency, a one-year experiment was carried out among the freshmen of medicine majors of Shandong University. Questionnaire is distributed to the experiment students at the end of the study and the collected information are processed with the help of EXCEL. The results show that 72.34% students prefer to be assessed in a way that can integrate their learning performance with the term-end test; 75.53% students believe assessment on students' learning behaviors helps to cultivate and improve their learning autonomy; 77.77% students believe that the present assessment practice can motivate their language learning; 77.77% students think that they are honest when evaluate their peer's performance and 80% students consider that their peer's assessment is faire, which indicates its feasibility and its effect on stimulating learner autonomy. In order to test the impact of formative assessment on language proficiency growth, the means of test scores of students in experiment class and control class are compared by the means of independent sample t-test, SPSS10.0. By comparison there is a more rapid language...