A Study On The Application Of Formative Assessment In English Teaching In The Junior High School

Educational assessment is of great significance for students to master knowledge and skills and develop emotions and attitudes. Therefore, educational assessment plays an important role in English teaching activities in the junior high school. Unfortunately, for years, most teachers choose traditional summative assessment with the use of tests which are simple and easy to operate. In the traditional assessment process, teachers tend to emphasize criticism but overlook guidance, and emphasize praise but overlook encouragement. The enthusiasm and the intrinsic motivation of students are discouraged by such a way of the assessment which values the result more than the process. Influenced by exam-oriented education, the cultivation of students’ subjectivity and personality is neglected, too. In order to avoid the deficiency of summative assessment, formative assessment has been known and applied by more and more teachers. Formative assessment which is comprehensive and targeted stresses the dynamic course of a student’s advance and study. As an essential ingredient of the reform of English teaching, it goes through the whole teaching process and plays an important role to promote the development of English classroom teaching.Based on the research on the educational assessment at home and abroad, the thesis inquires into the application method of formative assessment in terms of multiple intelligence theory, humanistic education theory, constructivist education theory and communicative competence theory. Through the implementation of formative assessment in English teaching in the junior high school, the thesis tries to indicate the macro directions to the formative assessment reform.This research selects the students in Grade Seven, Anshan Huayu Middle School in Gaoxin District as the research subjects for a 5-month experiment(from September 2014 to January 2015) by means of experiment, observation, data analysis, questionnaires and case examples. Through the comparison of the experimental class and the control class before and after the experiment, this research analyses the different teaching effects by using formative assessment and summative assessment. The results show that the implementation of formative assessment is significant in strengthening students’ learning motivations, helping them develop positive emotions and attitudes, improving their language abilities and promoting their all-round development. The experiment uses several formative assessment scales and expounds the use and effects of some ways of the assessment. Finally, it is concluded that the use of formative assessment scales is an effective way of applying formative assessment in English teaching.