The Effects Of Formative Assessment On Learner Autonomy In English Learning At A Private College

With a boom of computers and network, learner autonomy has become one of thenecessary qualities to adapt to today’s “learning society”. As educators, we are keenly awarethat in today’s era of knowledge explosion, no education can teach all the human knowledgeto all learners, so, the aim of education is not as simple as only knowledge transmission butcultivating independent and life-long learners. By and large, successful learners tend to bethose who can study by themselves and are willing and have the ability to be responsible fortheir own learning.Nowadays, private college, as an essential form of higher education, has played anincreasingly important role which has cultivated a large number of application-oriented talentsfor society. However, it is undeniable that the students of private college, to a certain degree,are the losers in the traditional summative assessment and they have poor awareness oflearner autonomy and poor ability of autonomous learning. Compared with the students inpublic universities, there is a large knowledge and ability gap in their basic subjects such asEnglish, maths.In order to explore whether the implementation of formative assessment in Englishlearning would have a positive effect on private college students’ autonomous learning, theresearcher investigated the situation of students’ autonomy in English learning at a privatecollege, then conducted an eight-month teaching experiment according to formativeassessment. In the teaching experiment, basing on the continuous observation, record andreflection on the whole learning process, the researcher made judgments about students’performance, achievements, feelings, attitudes, learning strategies and so on. At the same time,the researcher employed a variety of assessment forms and assessment tools to track thelearning course: in the routine teaching process (listening, speaking, reading and writing),some assessment types (such as self-assessment, peer assessment, teacher assessment andcollaborative assessment) and assessment tools (e.g., portfolio, observation, journal,questionnaire and interview) were used. Doing this was to motivate students to learn, to helpstudents to effectively regulate their own learning so that students got a sense ofaccomplishment, self confidence and a spirit of cooperation, which could help students shiftfrom passive recipients to active participants so as to improve students’ autonomous learningability in English. The participants of this research were85students majoring in Business Administration ofShandong Yingcai College, and were divided into the control group and the experimentalgroup. During the experiment questionnaire, interview, and test were applied as theinstruments for collecting data. The questionnaire was designed to investigate the situation oflearner autonomy. Questionnaire survey and test were conducted before and after theimplementation of formative assessment for the purpose of studying the changes of the levelof learner autonomy and academic performance in English. In the end the experimental datawere analyzed with the help of SPSS19.0for Windows.The result analyses of the questionnaire surveys have found that there is a significantdifference in the level of learner autonomy before and after the experiment. The research alsoshows the implementation of formative assessment is helpful for private college students toform a positive attitude towards learner autonomy, to be more confident, to strengthenlearning motivation and to master learning strategies. While there is no significant differencein students’ academic performance in English before and after the experiment, the dataindicate that the application of formative assessment does improve students’ academicperformance in English. The results of the interview show that students hold a positiveattitude towards formative assessment and learner autonomy. As far as they are concerned, theimplementation of formative assessment improves their self-assessment ability as well asself-confidence. Besides, their perceptions of learning have undergone some changes as well.The experimental research concludes that the implementation of formative assessment haspromoted private college students’ autonomous learning ability and academic performance inEnglish.