A Study On The Application Of Formative Assessment To English Writing Instruction In Senior High School

Language skills are important parts of English communicative ability.Writing,which is one of the four basic language skills,has been the key point and difficulty in English instruction in senior high school.In the current situation of English writing instruction in senior high school,English teacher usually adopts traditional teaching method and evaluation mode which is summative assessment.Teachers evaluate students' writing results according to one piece of test paper,and ignore the process of English writing and progress they make in the process.Traditional summative assessment does not have significantly positive effects on boosting students' writing interests and autonomy,stimulating their writing attitude,developing good writing habits and improving their writing proficiency.Therefore,it is necessary to reform current teaching and assessment methods in English writing.The thesis discusses the feasibility and effectiveness of formative assessment in English writing instruction and aims to promote effects on English writing instruction with the aid of formative assessment in English instruction in senior high school.Through the analysis of Chinese scholars' studies of English writing and current English writing situation in senior high school,the researcher introduces content of writing assessment,current main research fields and evaluation methods in writing.According to comparison of formative assessment and summative assessment,advantages of formative assessment and disadvantages of summative assessment are presented,which prove the practical significance of the research.The researcher specially raises three research questions: 1)Does formative assessment boost students' English writing ability? 2)Does formative assessment stimulate students' English writing autonomy? 3)Does formative assessment improve students' English writing interests and attitude? The teaching experiment which lasts for one semester is applied in two parallel class of the P Senior High School in Shanxi province.In the teaching experiment,the researcher conducts formative assessment in the experimental class and traditional summative assessment in the control class.With the help of questionnaires,tests and interviews,the researcher collects data and analyzes them through SPSS.According to the results of analyzing data from experiment,students of both the experimental class and control class improve their writing ability.Moreover,there are significant differences between the experimental class and control class in English writing results.Students in the experimental class make more improvements in English writing proficiency than the control one.On aspects of writing interest,autonomy and attitude,compared with results of pre-questionnaire,students of the experimental class improve them significantly through conducting formative assessment.And they have more interests and autonomy,as well as hold more positive attitude than the control one.Although students of control class also make improvements in these aspects,their progress scope is smaller than the experimental one.Three research questions are proved by the teaching experiment,which means that formative assessment boosts students' English writing ability,stimulates students' English writing autonomy and improves students' English writing interests and attitude.At last,the researcher summarizes positive effects of formative assessment on English writing instruction in senior high school and implementation of applying formative assessment in English writing class.Furthermore,the resear cher also raises some questions in conducting formative assessment and several shortcomings of the teaching experiment.With limitations of the research analyzed,some hopes for further research are offered.