Practical Research On Formative Assessment In Secondary Vocational School English Teaching

Teaching assessment is considered as a very significant factor in secondary vocationalschool English teaching. A comprehensive and scientific assessment system is important forimproving the teaching quality. It can not only help teachers acquire feedback, improveadministration of teaching and ensure teaching quality but also provide an effective means forstudents to improve methods and achieve the good learning effects.Summative assessment is widely used in secondary vocational schools. It has not only itsadvantage, but also disadvantage that cannot be ignored. It values the final result and neglectsthe process, and the partial evaluation content is taken as the whole, and the assessmentsubject is also single. It is not a good way to evaluate students’ comprehensive learning ability,and it is also bad for the students’ integrated development. The Ministry of Education enactsthe new English Curriculum Standard of Secondary Vocational Schools in2009. Thecombination of summative assessment and formative assessment is put forward in the newEnglish Curriculum Standard. Weakness of the summative assessment leads to theintroduction of formative assessment. Formative assessment adopts flexible ways to focus onthe comprehensive quality of students, and it pays attention to not only academic performance,but also learning interest, learning attitude, learning strategy, learning autonomy and teamspirit. Besides, it respects for individual differences. It conforms to the development trend ofteaching evaluation.English teaching assessment in secondary vocational school is taken as the researchobject. The article, based on the teaching theory, analyzes the current situation of teachingassessment and explores how to apply formative assessment in the practical teaching. Thethesis consists of four chapters. Chapter One introduces research background, researchpurpose, research significance and reviews historical and present situation related to formativeassessment at home and abroad. Besides, it defines relevant concepts and summarizes somebasic theories of teaching assessment. Chapter Two is about the survey of current situation ofteaching assessment and the analysis of the existing problems. Chapter Three, which is the core of the essay, discusses the application of formative assessment in secondary vocationalschool. The experimental subjects are from two parallel classes, Class1201and Class1202,in Shijiazhuang Railway Transportation School. All the students major in rolling stock. Class1201is served as a control group which is implemented summative assessment, and Class1202is served as an experimental group which is implemented formative assessment. First,the writer gets to know the students’ English learning situation through questionnaire. Second,the writer designs a formative assessment plan according to the students’ actual situation.Then the author carries out a teaching experiment for a semester. The experiment shows thatexperimental group makes much more progress than control group, especially in “speaking”and “writing”. Chapter Four is about some reflections in response to problems that arise in theexperiment.