Application Of Formative Assessment In Senior English Listening Teaching

Assessment is an important part of English curriculum. The scientific assessment system is an important safeguard to realize curriculum goals. With the pushing forward of English teaching reform, traditional assessment system which has only emphasized summative assessment by far can not meet the requirements of the new curriculum. Traditional summative assessment lays stress on result more than process, knowledge more than quality and selection more than encouragement. This kind of assessment method gives students tremendous psychological pressure and makes them lose their interest and confidence of learning English.In order to meet the requirements of foreign language curriculum reform and development, the Ministry of Education proposed a goal:"Base on the process, develop in full-scale". The new English Curriculum Standard (NECS) for general senior middle school (Trial Edition) points out:"Multi-assessment system which aims to promote students full-scale development should be built in senior English. The formative assessment should be paid as much attention to as that to summative assessment, and assessment should emphasize students’comprehensive language ability and their emotion, attitudes and values in learning process. The assessment system should be helpful for students to monitor and modify learning goals and strategies, and to enhance self-confidence in English learning." The significance and necessity of formative assessment have been well acknowledged in the teaching field. However, it is a pity that studies on the theory and practice of formative assessment are mainly focused on speaking, reading and writing, seldom on listening.This thesis is a research on application of formative assessment in senior English listening teaching. The purpose of experiment is to find out whether formative assessment could improve senior students’English listening achievement, and whether it could develop their regulate-and-control strategy, and stimulate their interest of listening and of learning English.108liberal arts students from Class1and Class2, Grade2of Xiuwu Fifth Senior Middle School in He’nan province were involved in the research. The listening scores of two classes were roughly the same before the experiment. Class1was the experimental class which applied formative assessment into the listening teaching. Summative assessment was adopted in the control class—Class2. Questionnaire, formative testing and weekly diary are used as the instruments of the research.After the experiment of a term, by analyzing the data collected in the experiment, we can conclude that formative assessment not only can improve students’academic achievements of listening, but also can enhance students’interest in listening and cultivate their regulate-and-control strategy.There are five parts in this thesis. Chapter1serves as introduction which states background, significances, purpose and organization of the research. Chapter2is literature review, which mainly introduces the features and functions of formative assessment, and comparison between formative assessment and summative assessment. Chapter3is research design. Based on the collected data, Chapter4is the analysis and discussion of the research. Chapter5concludes the major findings, and points out the limitations and the suggestions for future study.