Exploring Research On The Effectiveness Of Formative Assessment In College English Teaching

Evaluation is an indispensable part of a teaching program. Formative assessment aims at improving language teaching and learning through providing teachers and learners with immediate and effective feedback. The introduction of formative assessment not only enriches the teaching methods, but also helps learners take their initiative voluntarily. It proves to a very effective means of evaluation in teaching practice.At present, there is a tendency of having computer-assisted teaching mode nationwide. Therefore, it is necessary and important for us to conduct a careful study of its effectiveness. Within one-year duration of action research, an empirical research has been conducted on 112 non-English major freshmen in Dalian University of Technology. The 112 learners are divided into treatment group and control group, and the treatment group receives intervention of formative assessment. Through class observations, questionnaire surveys, interviews and setup of portfolios, a series of data are collected and analyzed for the research purposes. A comparison of the treatment group and control group is made to tell the influence of formative assessment. The findings, after the intervention of formative assessment, show that significant changes have taken place in the treatment group in their learning strategies and affective factors. However, there have been no significant changes in learners' motivation. It is believed that a systematic, scientific and effective evaluation system is important in raising the learners' awareness, fostering learning strategies, which in turn is of great and long-term value for students' self-development.