A Study On The Application Of Formative Assessment To Non-english Majors’ Listening Teaching

Based on humanism, constructivism, and multi-cognitive, formative assessment continues to explainthe nature of teaching, reveals the key to classroom teaching, considers the needs of students, and promotesindependent learning. When applied to classroom teaching, it provides the necessary information forreal-time adjustment of teaching and learning. In this sense, formative assessment allows teachers andstudents to understand the learning situation, and make timely adjustments to ensure that the students havetime to achieve the targeted learning objectives. Weaknesses and problems of the traditional assessmentsystem appeal to the advocacy of formative assessment, and it has become one of research focus inlanguage learning and teaching in China over the past ten years.The present study is based on a program in GanSu United University. It was aimed to improve theassessment models in students’ English listening learning by adopting formative assessments in the processof their learning on the basis of experiment. The experiment was carried out to two classes of freshmen in2011. In the experimental class, formative assessment was adopted, while in the other controlled class, thetraditional summative assessment was employed. The research questions to be addressed are:1) Donon-English majors improve the English listening achievement through formative assessment?2) Donon-English majors get better listening comprehension ability through formative assessment?3) Donon-English majors become more interested in English listening through formative assessment?Classroom observation, questionnaires, portfolios, testing and other methods were used to collectqualitative and quantitative data for analysis and discussion. The experiments show that: First, formativeassessment indeed makes a contribution to the improvement of students’ academic achievement of Englishlistening learning. Second, formative assessment gives students new insights into their own Englishlistening learning and they gradually hold more listening strategies and methods in short-term memory,catching and retelling the meanings and the like, which are probable to help them improve their listeningcomprehension ability. Third, formative assessment is proved to be effective to activate students’ interestsin listening learning.This study has some practical significance: formative Assessment can apply to the non-Englishmajors’ listening teaching. Through the experiment, it is proved that formative assessment is better than the traditional assessment for promoting students ’ English listening learning, the reflection on the assessmentis effective in promoting the communication of teachers and students, helping teachers understand theteaching dynamic and making the timely improvements of teaching. And formative assessment can enhancestudents’ English learning self-confidence and autonomy and thus to improve their learning outcomes.