The Application Of Formative Assessment In Middle School English Teaching

Teaching evaluation is an important and essential part in the process of English teaching.For a long time, the traditional evaluation method, summative assessment, has been used inEnglish teaching, which evaluates students’ learning based on assignments or examinations.The disadvantages of traditional evaluation method are obvious: rewarding results rather thanprocess, putting a premium on scores rather than on the quality, etc. The English CurriculumReform Outline for national basic education calls for the reform of current evaluationmechanism."Paying attention to the effects of formative assessment on student development,"is an important principle of evaluation in The English Curriculum Standard (draft).This research attempts to apply formative assessment to English teaching, expecting tohelp students construct an independent learning mechanism, inspire the development of theirpersonality, and improve their ability of cooperative learning. The chief method in theexperiment is the use of the portfolio. The portfolio consists of electronic and paper portfolios.Electronic portfolio includes preview electronic questionnaire, evaluation forms of performanceand assignment completion of students in each class, video of conversation between studentsand immediate feedback from the teacher, results of test of each module, mid-term test result,and final exam result. Paper portfolio contains preview questionnaire, evaluation forms ofperformance of students in each class, statistical tables of assignment completion of students,exam papers, self-evaluations before and after test, evaluations from teacher and other studentsafter each test, etc. During the experiment, the teacher shows various evaluation results of eachstage to students in a timely manner, in order to let them know the problems in their study,correct their mistakes and improve their qualities of study. The results of this experiment aresummarized and discussed and point out the new problems needed to be solved. Finally,possible operation methods are proposed to prepare for further research of teaching evaluation.