A Research On The Application Of Formative Assessment Based On Learning Community To Middle School English Teaching

The middle school English is one of the main subjects in compulsory education in China. Therefore, how to improve the English ability and grades of the middle school students has been paid great attention to. However, lacking of teachers, education resources and family education in some rural schools causes many problems to the students such as the poor learning ability in English, having few interests in learning English, and so on. In 2011, the ministry of education of the People’s Republic of China published The New English Curriculum Standards of Compulsory Education. It says that assessment plays an important role in the English course. A scientific assessing system is the important guarantee to achieve the course objectives. The subjects of the assessment in English course should be various. So should the forms, the contents, and the objects of the assessment. So far, the common assessing method in the middle school English teaching is still the summative assessment which depends on examinations. As a result, the writer thinks if we want to overcome the difficulties in teaching which are faced by the rural schools, we can start with the changing of the assessing methods.In this thesis, the writer set up a formative assessing system based on learning community, and applied it to the middle school English teaching expecting this system would help to solve the teaching problems faced by the rural schools. First, this thesis reviewed and analyzed the relative theories about formative assessment and learning community, and then set up a formative assessing system based on learning community theoretically. Second, according to the reality of the middle school English teaching, the writer set up different assessing models in listening and speaking class, reading class, and writing class. And the writer also explained clearly how to operate the assessing system and how to do it by different assessing subjects. At last, the writer talked about how to make use of the assessing result to feedback to the assessing subjects so as to help the teachers to adjust the teaching plans and teaching strategies.To test the assessing system set up in this thesis, the writer did an empirical research. After the contrast experiment between the two classes of Grade Nine in Harbin No.109 Middle School which lasted for about one term, the writer used SPSS to analyze the data from the experiment, and then interviewed some students and parents randomly. According to the analyses, some conclusions and reflections can be gained. First, this assessing system can help the students increase the interest in English learning, and improve the abilities in English learning and communicating with others. And it can also help the students get better results of examinations. Also, it can help the teachers know about the situation of the students’ English learning in time, which will be useful for the adjustment of the teaching plans and the teaching strategies. At the same time, it can be helpful to the parents to know more about their own children in English learning. At last, the writer combined the relative theories and research so as to analyze the problems to be studied further, and talked about the research development in the future.