A Study On The Application Of Formative Assessment To English Writing Teaching In Senior Middle School

Aimed at confirming students’ potential and developing their study, formative assessment is a kind of assessment which evaluates the students’ learning process. In contrast with the traditional summative assessment, formative assessment is a kind of assessment in a qualified way. It centers on students to help and encourage them to adjust their learning process so as to make progress. However, experimental study about formative assessment in teaching senior school students’ English writing at home is still in a developmental stage.This thesis is an application of formative assessment in writing class for high school students. The experiment was conducted to answer the questions:(1) Whether formative assessment can improve senior school students’ writing capability?(2) What is the students’ conception and attitude toward formative assessment? The subjects of this study were 120 students from Grade One of No.1 Senior Middle School of Yongchang, Gansu. The students were divided into the controlled class and experimental class, and the results were obtained after a pre-test offered to the both classes. Formative assessment is integrated into the teaching of the experimental class. During the one-semester experiment, the teacher and students worked out the rubric together and took part in a series of writing practices.Through analyzing the data collected in the experiment and the two tests, conclusions are reached as follows: 1. Data obtained from pre-tests and post-tests all shows that the application of formative assessment in the writing class facilitates high school students’ abilities to write in English. 2. Establishing evaluation scales with the students can improve the students’ enthusiasm towards English writing. 3. Teacher-evaluation is beneficial for students to reflect the problems they encounter in English writing and to summarize their own experience and skills. 4. Portfolio-based English teaching is helpful to improve English writing and teaching.But some limitations still lie in the study like the small size of subjects and the failure to taking genders of the subjects into account.