An Empirical Research On Promoting Learners Autonomy Through Formativeassessment In English Teaching In Secondary Vocational Schools

The orientation of secondary vocational education in the future is to cultivate professionaltechnicians qualified with strong thirst for knowledge and exuberant creativity, goodorganization and management skill as well as the capacity of updating and utilizing knowledge.In English teaching of secondary vocational schools, it is vital to foster students’ learnerautonomy in turning students into lifelong learners voluntarily exploring new knowledge andkeeping improving themselves. English being a basic required subject, English teaching isresponsible not only for stimulating students’ interest and improving their ability tocomprehensively use English, but also for helping students to form effective learning strategiesand equipping them with learner autonomy to be the lifelong learners. However, most students ofsecondary vocational schools are poor performers without awareness of learner autonomy andlacking motive and strategies for learner autonomy in English. At present, summative assessmentis mainly used in English teaching of secondary vocational schools. Summative assessmentplaces little emphasis on behaviors of students and the process of their study. The activeness andcreativity of students are neglected, and there is no learner autonomy to speak of. Therefore, it isa striving direction for the English teaching of secondary vocational schools to reform the singleassessment style so as to improve the English teaching and influence students’learner autonomy.The thesis is made up of the following parts: firstly, the research topic of this thesis is putforward based on the analysis of the current state of English teaching and assessment insecondary vocational schools as well as the analysis of the research results home and abroad.Secondly, the research to be done is more well-directed after reviewing the research state oflearner autonomy and formative assessment. Thirdly, the author makes an investigation on thelearner autonomy of students in secondary schools with a self-designed questionnaire. It turnsout to be that most students of secondary schools are deficient in learner autonomy. They lackmotives for study and have difficulty in making plans for study and managing their time in study.Based on the result of the questionnaire, the author carries out a one-year teaching experiment onformative assessment and learner autonomy with the aids of six formative assessment tools,namely autonomous learning note, participation in teaching activities, weekly journal, readingreport, learning archives and study results comment. Finally, statistical method of CompareMeans One-way ANOVA is used to analyze the result of the experiment with tables of statistics and necessary explanations. The statistics indicates that utilizing formative assessment in Englishteaching of secondary vocational schools can help to promote learner autonomy and provide theteacher with prompt feedback. In addition, statistics also indicates that formative assessment canbe accepted by students of secondary vocational schools, as it well meets the demand of thosestudents in assessment.