An Empirical Study Of The Influence Of Formative Assessment On High School English Underachievers

The recruitment expansion of the senior high schools has brought severe impact on the recruitment of vocational high schools, some of which have removed the score threshold for the students resulting in the great decline of the students' overall qualities. The research done by the Ministry of Education in 2007 shows that the vocational high schools especially the rural ones have become the major disastrous areas of English underachievers. However, traditional summative assessment has still been adopted as the main evaluation method of English teaching in vocational high schools, which could not only further discourage English underachievers' interest and confidence but also put up their resistance to learning English, making English teaching and learning in vocational high schools more difficult and embarrassing. In order to change this circumstance, it is quite necessary to set up a scientific assessing system which is conducive to the overall development of the students with English learning difficulties. Formative assessment is a kind of effective evaluation that aims to promote students' overall development, which can theoretically advance students' English abilities and effectively form students' healthy and positive personality as well. Therefore, by researching and applying formative assessment, the study intends to answer the following three questions:(1)Is formative assessment effective to improve English underachievers' English learning interests?(2)What influences does formative assessment bring about on English underachievers' learning abilities such as listening, grammar and vocabulary, reading and writing?(3)Is formative assessment more effective to improve English underachievers' English achievements than summative assessment?The thesis first explores the status quo of the English underachievers and current evaluation system so as to emphasize the necessity of formative evaluation, then introduces educational assessment, relevant concepts and development of formative assessment, formative assessment in English teaching, definitions and causes of English underachievers as well as the theoretical basis of the study. The thesis presents an empirical study taking 114 subjects majoring in auto repair from two equalling classes from XX Vocational High School, on whom intervention of formative assessment with classroom observation, self-assessment, peer-assessment, journals, e-portfolio as main methods was made through two school semesters, so as to thoroughly research the influences of the formative assessment on English underachievers' learning interests, learning ability, learning achievement, etc. Collected by the instruments of questionnaires, tests and interviews, the data of the research was scientifically processed and analysed by SPSS17.0. Based on the results and discussions of the data, major findings of the study are listed as follows:(1)Formative assessment is effective to improve English underachievers' English learning interests.(2)Formative assessment is efficient to improve English underachievers' English learning abilities of listening, reading, grammar and vocabulary.(3)Formative assessment is more effective than summative assessment to improve English underachievers' English overall achievements.(4)Formative assessment has little influence on English underachievers' writing ability.Formative assessment is conducive to high school English underachievers in many aspects, but due to their severely poor learning interests, inadequate confidence and fragile foundation, researches on assessment, teaching methods etc. should still be further promoted.