Correlation Research On Multi-subject Formative Assessment And EFL Internal Learning Dynamic Of Junior High School Students

The National English Curriculum Standard for Compulsory Education (Experimental Draft)(2001) introduces the concept of formative assessment, which means that in the process of English teaching and learning, multiple subjects including teachers, students themselves, peers, and their parents are involved and various kinds of tools or techniques are employed in the process of assessment to collect feedback information about teaching and learning to continually motivate and develop the students’learning interest, build up the students’learning confidence, cultivate the excellent learning habit and effective learning strategies, develop the students’ability of self-motivated learning and cooperative learning. Learning interest, learning confidence and self-motivated learning are actually the components of learning dynamic. Learning dynamic is an important factor influencing English learning and is viewed as a complicated and interactive system made up of internal learning dynamic mainly consisting of learning motivation (learning extrinsic motivation, learning intrinsic motivation), learning interest and attitude, and learning self-efficacy, and external dynamic consisting of learning environment, incentive mechanism, etc.. Learning dynamic is influenced by the factors from school, family and students. Then, whether students’ learning dynamic is affected by the assessment from their teachers, themselves, their peer and their parents is not clear.This thesis aims to find out whether the use of formative assessment with multi-subject being involved is correlated to the level of internal English learning dynamic of junior high school students based on the investigation of the current situation of the use of multi-subject formative assessment and the level of students’ internal learning dynamic. This is explored from three aspects:what’s the current situation of the use of multi-subject formative assessment; what’s the current situation of the students’ level of EFL internal learning dynamc; whether the use of teacher-assessment, self-assessment, peer-assessment, parent-assessment and the whole multi-subject formative assessment system is respectively correlated to the students’ level of internal English learning dynamic.Two hundred and thirty-eight students from Yancheng Experimental Junior High School were chosen as the research subjects. They come from different grades. These subjects were asked to answer the multi-subject formative assessment questionnaire and EFL internal learning dynamic questionnaire which were used to investigate the current situation of the use of multi-subject formative assessment and the level of EFL internal learning dynamic. Based on the current situation of the use of multi-subject formative assessment and the level of EFL internal learning dynamic, the correlation between them was analyzed.The collected data were analyzed with the assistance of the Statistical Package for the Social Science 13.0 (SPSS 13.0) for windows. The descriptive statistics, the independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variances and Pearson correlation were used for different kinds of analysis.Through data analysis, it is found that:teacher-assessment still takes the predominant place, while the use of self-assessment and peer-assessment is in a quite low degree; the English learning self-efficacy is at a comparatively low level; Extremely significant and positive correlation respectively exists between teacher-assessment, self-assessment, peer-assessment, parent-assessment and EFL internal learning dynamic (English learning motvation, English learning interest and attitude, English learning self-efficacy), excluding insignificant correlation between teacher-assessment/ parent-assessment and English learning external motivation, component of English learning motivation; the whole multi-subject formative assessment system is also extremely significantly and positively correlated with EFL internal learning dynamic.Based on the main findings, suggestions can be given to English teachers, English learners and learners’parents so that they could assess learners more effectively. First, teachers should change their mind and cultivate learners’ awareness and ability of employing self-assessment and peer-assessment so that they can learn to learn and reflect autonomously, independently or cooperatively. Second, English learners themselves should actively monitor their learning process based on the information from teacher-assessment, self-assessment, peer-assessment and parent-assessment. Then, parents should encourage learners’ learning and progress. At last, based on the use of teacher-assessment, self-assessment, peer-assessment and parent-assessment, multi-subject formative assessment system can be constructed so that learners’ learning interest and attitude, learning self-efficacy can be improved and learning motivation can be achieved and at last students’ EFL internal learning dynamic is improved.