On The Application Of Formative Assessment In The Context Of Senior High English Teaching

Assessment is of great significance in language education and belongs to one of the three major subjects of modern educational science and research. However, for a long time, assessment in the English teaching depends so much on testing system, known as summative assessment. Students'testing scores are seen as the only criterion of assessing the performance in their learning. This traditional means of assessment overemphasizes the quantitative function of assessment, while overlook its qualitative one. That is to say, it ignores students'individual personality, and what they need during the language learning.With the implementation of the New Curriculum Standard of English in Senior High, the role of assessment has been thought of in a much broader view and many other means of assessment have been taken into consideration for the sake of developing students'comprehensive capability of English. In this respect, formative assessment has been highlighted. This thesis tries to make research on the application of formative assessment in the present context of English teaching through the author's real teaching practice, with the purpose of testing whether students'learning interest is improved and their language proficiency is promoted. Therefore, the author chooses her own teaching classes as the subject students, and one is the experimental class and the other is the controlled class. Students from both the experimental class and the controlled class are exposed to 160 English classes or so, with 40 weeks for a whole term. Besides, both of them are using the same learning materials, that is, the text books published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. In the research, the experimental class is assessed with the way of formative assessment, while the controlled class is assessed with the traditional way, that is to say, summative assessment, only valuing testing scores.As is seen from the experimental research, formative assessment, because of the respect of individualism and humanism, promotes students'learning interest, and therefore, a series of positive effects emerge. First, formative assessment helps students obtain language knowledge. Second, students improve their language skills through self-assessment Third, students'learning interest are enhanced with the learning anxiety eased. Fourth, formative assessment contributes to the increase of students'consciousness of cooperation and participation, making for the promotion of self study ability.With all advantages mentioned above, there still some limitations and problems that should be solved as formative assessment is progressing in the real language teaching practice in Senior High. This thesis aims to explore how the application of formative assessment helps students to improve their language ability and enhance their learning interest, hoping to supply some practical methods to teachers of English. We do wish teachers of English would change their teaching perspective and practice to best suit their special needs.