The Application Of Formative Evaluation To The Course Of English Pubic Speaking For English Majors

Curriculum evaluation, which serves as an indispensable and vital part of language teachingand learning, has a great effect on students’ learning motivations, initiative, and activeness. In China,summative evaluation was adopted for the past decades in which teachers concentrate excessivelyon the outcome of end-of-term examination while neglecting the learning process. Differently,formative evaluation, which provides the timely and ongoing feedback with detailed information ofstudents’ sustained development, is rather a kind of qualitative assessment. Its position in foreignlanguage teaching and learning has been proved and approved gradually due to the diversity informs, contents and methods. English public speaking, as a practical course taken by English majors,mainly lays stress on both English language abilities and public speaking skills. At present, theexploration of new evaluation system of English public speaking is appealing more scholars andresearchers.Based on the characteristics and the effect on English learning and teaching objectives ofcurrent EPS teaching, the thesis studies the application of formative evaluation and its function andeffect on EPS learning. In this paper, the author surveyed61senior students of English major fromtwo classes and used collected information to make analysis with intention of testifying the positiveimpact of formative evaluation on students’ ESP learning. The research made a comparison onteaching effect between formative assessment and traditional assessment to seek the significance offormative assessment. After the experiment, a survey was also conducted with the students in bothclasses and the teacher to investigate their subjective feedback on the formative assessment.After a series of qualitative study on students’ ongoing progress and a quantitative study on theresult of students’ formal speeches, the survey shows that,(1) students in the experimental class hasmade remarkable progress in presentation ability and sub-skills in general than students in thecontrol class. They improved a lot in terms of language flexibility, sentence organization andcoherence.(2) Through teacher’s monitoring of the whole learning process and the solving ofongoing problems, formative evaluation has received high recognition from students in experimental class. Students interests and enthusiasm to the English public speaking and theirself-confidence has improved greatly.(3) Formative evaluation has complemented and enrichedalternative evaluation system, promoting the students’ autonomous and collaborative learning tolarge extent.