Formative Assessment Application To Spoken English In Chinese High Schools

New Requirement for High School English Curriculum points out that listening, speaking, reading and writing are four basic language skills in English learning. It indicates that spoken English is important in high school English learning. The suggestion of using formative assessment in English teaching and learning process is also mentioned in New Requirement for High School English Curriculum. What are the teachers’and students’ attitudes toward the use of formative assessment in English speaking? How do the teachers help the students to use formative assessment in English speaking? Can the use of formative assessment in English speaking improve students’speaking competence? In order to find out the answers to these questions, a research was carried out among106senior middle school students and15senior middle school English instructors.In the research process, the author found out that formative assessment is not only a evaluative tool but also a teaching strategy in daily instruction process. This new assessment can make the students have more involvement in class activities. Meantime, the use of portfolio assessment, self-assessment and peer-assessment approaches gives students more chances to show themselves in the activities in and out the classroom.There are four steps of the research. At first, a questionnaire was addressed to investigate the students’and teachers’attitudes toward the use of formative assessment in English speaking instructions and the current situation about English speaking of learning and assessment. Secondly, a pre-test was addressed before the experiment with the purpose of finding out the students’English speaking competence, and the results and the analysis show that the current students’English speaking competence is low. And then based on the problems existed in the pre-test and the current learning situation, the author made a lot of teaching methods which were applied to the experiment class. And after3months, the last step was taken on. A post-test was carried out to find out whether the students’English speaking competence could improve. And the results showed that the hypothesis was right.However, formative assessment is just a kind of instruction strategy, it will change following the changing of teaching environment. How to apply it to the practical teaching situation is the final purpose that the researchers should bear in mind. At last, the author sincerely hope this thesis could have some benefits for high school English teaching and learning.