Effects Of Formative Assessment On Vocational School Students’ English Learning

Assessment is considered as a very significant factor in Englishlearning and teaching. As one of the assessment approaches, formativeassessment evaluates the whole process of the students’ learning. Itspurpose is to find out the language aptitude of each student, improve andstrengthen students’ learning methods and provide feedback for teachersand the students as well.The status of the English teaching and learning in vocational schoolsis not satisfactory. Many of the vocational school students have lostinterest in English learning because of their past experiences of failure inthe summative evaluation. The failure in the traditional summative examsalso contributes to their low self-esteem, which prevents them fromengaging in classroom activities with confidence. Hence, manyvocational schools have encouraged the teachers to implementinformative assessment in order to achieve better language learningresults.However, few scholars have done studies on formative assessmentimplementation in vocational schools. Hence, Using multiple intelligencetheory, humanism and constructivism as its theoretical framework, thepresent study attempts to examine the following questions in order toshed light on this issue: (1) Can formative assessment prompt the vocational school students’participation in English learning?(2) Can formative assessment help the vocational school students tobuild up confidence in English learning?(3) Can formative assessment help the vocational school students toimprove their English learning achievement?The study recruited two classes of the students from GuiyangEconomy and Trade Vocational School as its participants. They werefreshmen who majored in computer application. The pretest resultsshowed that the two classes were of the same English proficiency level,hence they were assigned as the experimental class and the control classrandomly. The experiment lasted for one semester, and the experimentalclass was assessed by the formative methods including classroomobservation, questionnaires, portfolios, self-assessment, peer-assessment,teacher-assessment and final-term tests. In contrast, the control class wasevaluated by summative assessment, and only a test was used by the endof the experiment.The results showed that:(1) The formative assessment mode prompted the experimental class’participation in English learning. The number of the students in theexperimental class who attended English class and finished theirhomework on time increased after the experiment, besides, they became more actively involved in the classroom activities, self-assessment andpeer assessment.(2) The formative assessment mode helped the experimental classbuild up confidence in English learning. The self-assessment of theirEnglish ability was higher after the experiment than before, and more ofthem were able to participate in the classroom activities with confidence.(3) The experimental class’ mean score in the post-test wassignificantly higher than their means in the pre-test, and this proves thatthis class’ English learning achievement was improved after theexperiment.On the basis of the above findings, the thesis proposed implicationsfor the English teaching and learning in vocational schools in China.Weaknesses and recommendations for future study were also presented atthe last chapter of the thesis.