An Empirical Study On The Application Of Formative Assessment To English Writing Teaching In Junior High School

At present, summative assessment is adopted in most junior high school in China,which is mainly in the form of quiz, mid-term and final term examinations. Traditionalassessment method cannot provide teacher with their students’ progress in learning. Thenew English Curriculum Standard of junior high school defines the curriculum goals ascomprehensive language proficiency. Language knowledge, skills, learning strategies,attitude etc are included. Therefore the traditional summative assessment becomespowerless in testing students’ language competence on language learning. Formativeassessment provides both teachers and students with useful information for their futuredevelopment, and formative assessment can also helps students to become active learners.However researches on formative assessment in China, either in theory or in practice, arenot enough to meet the increasing needs of the current situation.The paper is to study the following two major research hypotheses:Frist, Students’ English writing interests can be improved by formative assessment.Second, Formative assessment is more efficient to improve students’ writing scorethan summative assessment.Eighty-six students of senior two in NO.95Junior High School of Shenyang arechosen to participate in the study as subjects. The eighty-six students are the experimentalclass, Class12and the control class, Class11. In teaching process, the experimental classis taught with formative assessment while the students in the control class are taught withsummative assessment. The author requires the students of the two classes to do thequestionnaires and the tests before and after the teaching experiment. The author alsomakes two interviews with fifteen students who are chosen randomly before and after theteaching experiment. The purpose is to know students’ interests and their opinion toformative assessment.The results of the experimental data analysis show that students’ English writinginterests can be improved by formative assessment. And formative assessment is moreefficient to improve students’ writing score than summative assessment.