An Experimental Study Of Application Of Formative Assessment To Oral English Learning In The Secondary Vocational School

With the development of the economics in the world, English has become a basic skillmust be mastered by people in the modern society, therefore, English teaching is an importantconstituent of the secondary vocational education. In2011, the Curriculum Standard ofEnglsih in the Secondary Vocational School indicates that “in the different fields, student’sability in English is put forward different degrees according to their occupation requirements,and English plays an important role for the students in the secondary vocational school todevelop in their occupation careers.” Consequently, it has been an emphasis for Englishteaching to improve students’ communicational ability in English.However, the current situation of English teaching in the secondary vocational schools isnot optimistic. Different from students in high school, students in the secondary vocationalschool lack of interest and positive attitude to learning because of their poor English basic. Inorder to improve their oral English ability, in addition to the improvement of teachingmethods, the change of the teaching evaluation is also very important.Teaching evaluation is rather necessary in the teaching process, which is to find theproblems in the teaching, and then to solve them, so as to improve teachers’ teaching level andto promote student’s study. Therefore, it become a hot point for the teachers to choose aneffective evaluation method in the teaching.Since the formative assessment as a new concept was proposed by Scriven in1967, it hasbeen focused more and more. The formative assessment is to evaluate students’ performancein the daily learning process and it also makes an evaluation of student’s score and theirdevelopment in emotion, attitude and strategy, which is based on the continuous observation,record and reflection in order to help students know what to do with what they learned incertain context. As an organic part of the process of teaching and learning, it iscomprehensively, objectively, scientifically and accurately that formative assessment provideimportant information which related to the purpose of students’ learning The formativeassessment is helpful to promote the development of students’ individuation and to improvethe quality of foreign language teaching fundamentally. The formative assessment isconjoined with oral English teaching closely, which can arouse students’ interest in learning, reflect their real level timely, accurately and objectively and make students’ ability in oralEnglish improved steadily.The research is to answer the following four questions: the first, is formative assessmentmore effective to raise students’ interest in oral English learning in the secondary vocationalschool? The second, is formative assessment more effective for students to form positiveattitude to oral English learning in the secondary vocational school? The third, is formativeassessment more effective to improve students’ oral English proficiency in the secondaryvocational school? The fourth, are overall students more satisfied with formative assessment?The research introduces the research background inculding the current situation of oralEnglish teaching and learning and the present situation of assessment in the secondaryvocational school. In addition, it reviews the related theoties about formative assessementand the current researches on formative assessment.The research was conducted at Zhang Jiakou Vocational Education Center. The subjectsof this research are120students major in security inspectation in this school. They are fromtwo classes.60students made up of14boys and46girls are from Class58, which isexperimental group. The formative assessment were implemented in the oral English teachingof Class58. And other60students come from Class59, consisted of17boys and43girls,which is a control group. The traditional summative assessment were still implemented in theoral English teaching of Class59. The two classes have the same class hours, same teachingfacilities but different assessment methods. Questionnaires and tests are usedt to collectqualitative and quantitative data.The experiment lasted for a whole term. The data indicate that students in theexperimental class have made great progress. In a word, the formative assessment is effectiveto arouse students’ interest in oral English learning, to form positive attitude to oral Englishlearning and to improve students’ oral English proficiency.