Enhancing English Learning Interest Using Formative Assessment In Junior High School In Rural Area

Classroom assessment is an important integral part in language teaching and learning process. It is one of main areas of the modern education science researches.Formative assessment is the mainstream assessment method of the current classroom assessment.It focuses on assessing on the students' learning process.It describes the overall progress of the students and the teacher can adjust the teaching appropriately and timely based on the feedback of the students.It is an effective way to promote the English learning interest of the students.Compared to the summative assessment,the purpose of formative assessment emphasizes on arousing the learning interest, training good learning habit and developing the learning autonomy ability in the process of students' learning.By the pre-questionnaire on English learning interest and the situation of English speaking activities of the eighty-five students from grade one in a rural area,the writer of the paper finds out that the English learning interest of the students has the tendency of decreasing and they don't enjoy speaking English activities.And the learning interest relates to the application of types of classroom assessment.This paper is to study two hypotheses of the study.One is that the appropriate types of formative assessment in English speaking activities will do a great deal to increase English learning interest of the students.Another is that the application of the formative assessment in English speaking activities may improve the English learning achievements of the students a lot.The purpose of the study is to arouse the students' English learning interest by changing the ways of classroom assessment application and to make the students enjoy English speaking activities. In this experiment the writer only applies the four types of formative assessment on the students of two classes from grade one,including questionnaire,observation,self and peer assessment,interview in the English speaking activities.Based on the result of pro-questionnaire survey and the comparison of mid-and final- examinations in the experiment,the two hypotheses are confirmed,namely,formative assessment is beneficial to promoting the English leaning interest of the students and improvement of English learning achievement.And some implications of the experiment are given in this part.The researcher also points out some limitations of the action research and gives some suggestions on further research in the end.