The Study Of Formative Evaluation Applied To Junior High School English Teaching

Education assessment has played an important role in modern education scienceareas by virtue of its importance. With the further study on the subject, theconnotations and modes have become various. In addition, its function and necessityhave gotten a lot of attention. Formative assessment lays more stress on students’learning progress, aiming to forecast students’ potentials, develop and improvestudents’ learning abilities. Not only does formative assessment focus on enhancingstudents’ learning methods, but also it provides valuable feedback for teachers.Under the guidance of curriculum reformation in basic education, a new assessmentmethod that combines summative assessment and formative assessment has appearedas an obvious change. In English teaching, the formative assessment that applies toeducational rules so as to promote students’ development should be utilized byteachers.In order to grasp the formative assessment that utilized in junior high schoolEnglish teaching, the author made a survey, based on a sample of one hundred andtwenty students in grade one and ten teachers in Shandong Normal University No.2Middle School. The classroom observation, teachers interview and studentsquestionnaires have been employed to serve for the research. The author made aresearch on teachers and students’ acquaintance towards formative assessment, theutilization of formative assessment in practical classroom, the influence of formativeassessment on students’ confidence and motivation. It can be concluded that teachersand students don’t possess a full knowledge of formative assessmet, some teachersand students even know little about it. Meanwhile, many formative assessmentsemployed in most practical class don’t work efficiently, many existing formativeassessments become a mere formality rather than perform a real effect. If theformative assessment can be utilized appropriately, students’ confidence andmotivation would be enhanced. The author analyzes the factors that impede theformative assessment’s fulfillment, there are teachers’ insufficient understanding, the press from schools, the severe system of senior high school entrance examination,and the limitations of formative assessment itself.Based on the findings of this survey, the author offered the following proposals,first,English teachers should offered the understandings towards formative assessmentso as to enhance their confidences about it. Second, The school should take somemeasures to improve formative assessment system and encourage teachers to employformative assessment, making it play a vital role on motivating students’ interests,developing students’ learning autonomy and confidence. Third, class activities shouldbe operated efficiently and appropriately. Fourth, the teacher should adopt variousassessment methods, making students play a dominant role in the process ofassessment. Fifth, the teachers should make a reasonable balance between teachingand assessment. This survey aims to arouse the concerns from English teachers,schools and relevant departments. Not only should we apply formative assessmentto English class, but also we need spread its utilization to students’ learning processes.