A Study Of The Influence Of Formative Assessment On Different Level Students’ English Learning In Junior Middle Schools

Education assessment has an important position of modern science and education field. And with the implementation of the new curriculum reform in China since 21 th century, assessment system has caused wide public attention in education field. The English Curriculum Standard which published in 2001 by the Ministry of Education points out that the evaluation system should represent diversification of evaluation subjects’ and evaluation form. However, for a long period, summative assessment is the main, even the only, evaluation method to assess the students’ learning performances in junior middle school and the test scores have been regarded as the final assessment criteria to group and select students. The differences and characters of students of different learning levels can’t have equal treatment and fair assessment. A kind of effective English instruction should not merely requires innovative teaching methods but also the scientific assessment system.As the formative assessment focuses on the learning process and various aspects of learning rather than learning results and knowledge learning, it has many advantages over summative assessment. More and more educators are studying the influence of formative assessment on English learning and teaching but few of the researches are from the perspective of the development of students of different levels. This study aims at exploring the influence of formative assessment on different level students’ English learning in junior middle schools. Not only the participants’ changes on test scores, but also some other important aspects such as learning motivation, learning attitude and learning strategies are investigated by the researcher. The following questions are going to be studied in this research.1.Does summative assessment have any negative influence on the different level students’ English learning?2.What measures can teachers take to apply formative assessment to teaching in junior middle schools?3.At what aspects can formative assessment improve the English performance of different level students?4.What should be noticed when English teachers apply formative assessment to develop different level students’ English performance?The author applies tests, questionnaires, assessment forms and interviews to study the two groups of participants from two classes, taught by the same English teacher, in a junior middle school in Haining City. During the four-month experiment, English instruction with formative assessment is applied in the experimental group while the traditional English instruction is used in the control group. All the data of the research are collected and analyzed by the author after the experiment. The research results reveals that formative assessment does positive influences on learning motivation, learning attitude and learning strategies as well as the test score of different level students’ English learning in junior middle school.According to the analysis and discussion of the research results, some pedagogical implications can be illustrated. For the teachers, they should use formative assessment to improve the students in different levels, regarding formative assessment as a continual dynamic process, apply both formative assessment and summative assessment and change their role as teachers. For students, they should bear in mind the importance of self-assessment, peer-assessment and teacher-assessment and their role as students should be changed.In the last chapter, the author also point out the suggestions for further research on the similar topic as well as the limitations.