An Empirical Study On Formative Assessment Of English Teaching In Grade Two Of A Senior Middle School

At present, the senior middle school education depends too much on traditional summative assessment system, under which test scores act as the only standard to assess the students'achievement, and the teaching activities are all extended from the content of the examinations. It can hardly motivate students to employ various learning strategies. The students of poor performance may feel over stressed out, and lose their self-confidence and enthusiasm towards English learning. Formative assessment melted into instruction can optimize the effect of teaching and learning. Instruction and assessment are to be considered together in order to ensure that instruction lend itself to assessment, and that the results of the assessment can direct ongoing instructional planning. In the past few decades, scholars around the world have written many literatures about the formative assessment, providing theoretical guidance and practical instructions for the teaching activities.The study is managing to apply the formative assessment into teaching practice. The study takes the students of Grade Two in both Class 353 and Class 363 from Quwo senior middle school as subjects. Class 353 acts as the experiment class, while Class 363 the control class. Grade Two of a senior middle school has its own unique characteristics. During this period, the students have accustomed themselves to the teaching and learning practice in senior middle school. It is a turning point for them to apply the basic language points into practice on a large scale. That the students in Grade Two are taken as subjects is theoretically representative. Based on the theory of backwash effect, constructivism, and multi-intelligence, etc, the study aims to explore the influence that the formative assessment may render on the students'academic achievement, application of learning strategies as well as the classroom anxiety condition. The study lasts 15 weeks, employing quantitative and qualitative research methods. The quantitative data are collected through tests, questionnaires and scales while the qualitative data are gained by the means of holding interviews with students of different levels, classroom observation, etc. By statistic analysis of the data of both the pre-test and post-test, it is proved that formative assessment plays an important role in improving students'academic achievement, narrowing the difference, enhancing the over-all development. The data from the questionnaires and scales show that the formative assessment can motivate students to actively employ learning strategies to adjust their learning, and reduce the students'classroom anxiety level as a whole. Results from interview prove that students prefer this new assessment system, and students in the experiment class begin to get a preliminary opinion about their learning goals, taking efforts to reach the goals, etc. This is an evidence of the improvement of students'self-regulation, an important factor of overall development. Further more, drawn on her own teaching experience, the researcher provides some feasible suggestions for English teachers as well as later researchers.