A Study Of The Application Of Formative Assessment In Teaching English Writing With Process Approach In Junior High Schools

Listening,speaking,reading and writing are four important skills in English learning.Writing,as a kind of language output skill,it can reflect not only students' ability of English expression and thinking,but also students'comprehensive ability of using language.However,a lot of researches show English writing is the weakest part among these four skills.Most students have no interest in writing,and they do not know the effective writing strategies.The New English Curriculum Standard(ECS)of Junior English for China emphasizes students are the learning subject,and teachers are the general organizers and guides in the activities of teaching.Based on humanism learning theory and constructivism,the formative assessment is combined with process approach in teaching English writing in this paper.The subjects of this study are 60 students of two classes in Grade 9 from Junior High school.One class is the experimental class(EC)in which the combination of formative assessment and process approach was applied,and the other class is the controlled class(CC)in which the product approach writing method was applied.The research instruments were questionnaires,tests and writing portfolios.Questionnaires and tests were used before and after the experiment for students both in experimental class and controlled class.After the experiment,the author analyzed and compared the data of questionnaires and tests of experimental class and controlled class.Software SPSS was utilized to analyze the data in this research.Portfolios were used to collect students' writing drafts and assessment forms to help students with English writing.The research intends to stimulate the students' writing interests,improve writing strategies and promote students' writing performance.The results of the study show the application of formative assessment in teaching English writing in Junior High Schools with process approach stimulates students'writing interests and improve their writing strategies.After five months' training,more students like English writing and can use effective writing strategies and methods.What's more,the application of formative assessment in teaching English writing in Junior High Schools with process approach can promote junior school students' writing performance.By the important activities,such as generating ideas,organizing ideas,drafting,peer-assessment,self-assessment,teacher-assessment,and final drafting,the students' writing ability can be improved.In addition,the author provides them with some strategies and instruments during the writing teaching in order to make the process more manageable and effective.After the experiment,the author found out that:1)the students in the experimental class became more interested and improve writing strategies in writing.2)the students in the experimental performed better than those in controlled class for the same topic in limited time.There is a significant difference in mean scores of pre-test and post-test in experimental class.The experimental study remains some implications for future English writing teaching:The experiment time is only 5 months and it is a little bit short.The more experiment time is given,and the more significant differences between the experimental class and the controlled class will be seen.This experiment just chose two classes in the school.More classes can be chosen for the persuasion of the experiment.The combination of formative assessment and process writing approach costs a lot of time.The writing teaching process and assessment forms need improving to be more suitable for junior middle school students.The conducting of portfolios need more specific introduction.All in all,the application of formative assessment in process approach to teach English writing in senior middle schools deserves further research.