The Application Of Formative Assessment In English Writing For Senior High School Students

English writing accounts for 20% of the proportion in the College Entrance Examination. However, the level of English writing of senior high school students in C hina has been at a relatively low level, and the relevant evaluation mechanism of writing has a relatively large space for improvement.Meanwhile, the traditional summative assessment mechanism has been adopted and is still currently in use in the teaching of English writing in high schools in China, which ignores students’ leading position, and stands in the way in helping to stimulate students’ enthusiasm and improve their writing level. Therefore, it is urgent to reform the evaluation system of writing teaching, and to apply the formative assessment into the teaching of English writing in senior high school, so as to assess students in all around directions and improve their writing skills. So far, there are many researches on formative assessment available, yet it is still in the exploration stage to introduce the formative assessment mechanism into high school English teaching, discussing the effects it has on attitudes towards writing and writing performance.This thesis aims to use formative assessment method in senior high school English writing teaching. Through the questionnaire survey and t he writing test, the author tries to answer the following two research questions:(1) Can the formative assessment change the attitude of the students to the writing of English?(2). Does the formative assessment help to improve English writing performance in senior high school?In the study, the author used questionnaires and writing tests. First, the attitude of the students in the experimental group was analyzed by the former questionnaire test, and the pre-writing test was carried out in the experimenta l class and the control class to analyze whether there are significant differences in between. Secondly, the author selected two classes(the experimental class and the control class) in Hongze Middle School of Jiangsu Province to carry out the experiment. The formative assessment system is adopted in the teaching of the experimental class while the summative assessment is adopted in the control class. After a period of experiment, the post-test of English writing is taken out in the control class and the experimental class to figure out whether there are differences between the two classes. The post-questionnaires are done to investigate whether there are changes about the students’ attitudes towards writing.Through the experimental study, the author concludes that: the use of formative assessment in the teaching of English writing can change students’ writing attitude. The students’ writing interest, their enthusiasm for writing and their self-confidence to write are improved in the experimental class. Formative assessment is helpful in improving the students’ English writing performance, and it has a positive impact on the improvement of the writing performance and its effect proves to be outstanding.