The Effect Of Formative Assessment On The Students' Interest In English Learning In The Secondary Vocational School

English language is one of the most widely used languages in the world and it works as an important tool for international communication.The status of English teaching is especially prominent with the advent globalization.Vocational school students are such a large proportion of the group that is required to master English.The New English Curriculum Standard for the vocational School(2009)clearly pointed out the importance of English curriculum for vocational school students.But it is widely acknowledged that the situation of English teaching and leaning in the secondary vocational schools is not optimistic.Firstly,influenced by the traditional assessment,English teaching is exam-oriented and it is the English teachers not the students dominate the English class.Secondly,most vocational school students don't have solid foundation of English when in middle school,which makes them feel more difficult and pains-taking to go further study in the vocational school.What's worse,they lose confidence and interest in English learning.Under such circumstances,how to generate students' interest in English learning becomes a problem,since interest is the best teacher for learning.Assessment plays a critical role in teaching and learning.Formative assessment,as a new styled form of assessment,has been applied in classroom teaching and is welcomed by both teachers and students with suchadvantages as flexible assessment criterias,multiple ways of making assessment and versified assessment activities.This thesis aims to enhance students' interest in English leaning by applying formative assessment to English teaching.Theoretical researches of formative assessment in China and abroad are plentiful while empirical studies are found to be sparse.Few of them are closely connected with local context and specific subject.Additionally,research objects include college students,middle school and primary school students but little attention was given to vocational school students.Further,most researches focus on the effects of formative assessment on students' academic achievement and language skills rather than the effects on nonintellectural factors such as interest,motivation and emotion.Therefore,this thesis focuses on the effects of formative assessment on students' leaning interest.Methodology involves questionniares,interviews and classroom observations to strengthen the reliability and validity of the research result.Comparison between preand post-questionnaire will directly tell us the changes of students interest levels.Two interviews uncovers the factors affecting student interest and testify the role of formative assessment in enhancing student interest from students' perspectives.Classroom observation will catch the authentic picture of students' changes in behaviors in the class.Data from the three sources confirmend that students' interest in English leaning can be enhanced by formative assessment.This thesis will further establish the importance of formative assessment in enhancing students' learning interest,and have some implications for further researches regarding nonintellectual aspects.Researches of the same kind has been enriched and research gap in this domain has also been narrowed.More importantly,student interest in English learning has been enhanced by formative assessment,thus laying a good foundation for further teaching and learning.