An Empirical Research On Formative Assessment In English Writing Teaching Of Senior High School

Assessment plays an important role in English teaching process, and according to the instructional functions, is classified into formative assessment and summative assessment. Formative assessment is different from summative assessment in that it is based on teachers and phase tests. Formative assessment is “student-centered” and emphasizes students’ learning process. During the learning process, formative assessment is used to assess students’ abilities, knowledge, emotion and learning strategies, etc.The studies on formative assessment are dated to the 1960 s in America. In China, formative assessment has become a hot topic in English language teaching in recent years. However, most of the study on formative assessment is theoretical in nature, and the empirical study on formative assessment is scarce in China. The suggestion on assessment of High School English Curriculum Standard is the combination of Formative Assessment and Summative Assessment. And the formative assessment shall be the primary in practice. In order to meet the English Curriculum Standard, the formative assessment is applied in the high school English writing in this research.There are three main research questions.(1) Can formative assessment improve senior high school students’ English writing interest?(2) Can formative assessment improve senior high school students’ writing reflection ability?(3) Can formative assessment improve senior high school students’ English writing proficiency?In this research, the subject involves 100 students of two classes from No.2 Senior High School in Jinzhou. One class is the experimental class, which has 49 students and the formative assessment is applied in English writing. The other is the control class, which has 51 students and the summative assessment is used in English writing. The instruments of the research are questionnaires and writing tests and writing portfolio. The statistic software SPSS17.0 is used in the research for processing data.The research concludes that after analyzing and comparing the data, the formative assessment helps to improve students’ English writing interest and writing reflection ability and writing proficiency.