An Empirical Study On Informal Formative Assessment In Junior High School English Classrooms

Informal formative assessment(IFA)that emerges through real-time teacher-student interactions has been found to improve student learning by enabling teachers to gather information on student understanding and provide timely feedback.Since the integration of teaching,learning,and assessment was proposed in the National English Curriculum Standard,informal formative assessment in English classrooms has been gaining increasing attention.While many scholars acknowledge the significance of the informal aspect of formative assessment,there’s little research dedicated to it,especially within the setting of English classrooms in Chinese secondary schools.Therefore,this study investigated the characteristics of informal formative assessment practices in Chinese junior high school English classrooms and explored how teachers’ informal formative assessment practices including eliciting student responses and using the information impact students’ learning outcomes,and identified the underlying factors that shape these practices from the teachers’ perspectives.Three research questions were formulated to guide the study:RQ1: What are the general characteristics of informal formative assessment(IFA)practices in junior high school English classrooms in China?RQ2: How do teachers’ IFA practices impact student learning?RQ3: What are the contributing factors that may shape teachers’ IFA practices?Four English teachers were purposefully sampled from 7th to 9th grade,and audio recordings and interviews were used as the primary data sources.The teachers’ assessment conversations were analyzed using the adapted ESRU cycle(Eliciting,Student Responding,Recognizing,Using)as a framework,with sequential analysis and conversation analysis employed for data analysis.The study found that assessment conversations varied in length and frequency across different lesson types and teachers,with incomplete cycles being more prevalent than complete cycles.The most frequently used strategies for teachers in ESRU cycle were: display questions,repeating,and elaboration.Display questions were found to more likely lead to words or phrases,while personal and negotiatory questions typically led to complete sentences,with personal questions having the potential to extend the ESRU structure.The study also revealed that the effectiveness of questions was not solely determined by the question type itself,but was also influenced by the contextualization of the questions and the teacher’s contingent support,as suggested by several deviant cases.Effective strategies for using information to support student learning included focusing and zooming,explicit error correction,extended wait time,and direct instruction serving as modeling.However,teachers were also found to ask “rhetorical”display questions,jump the gun to blurt out their understanding without assessing student understanding and toss questions back and forth among students to rush to turn completion.Those ineffective strategies included tossing back to skim over the discourse,direct instruction leading to disengagement,and non-contingent elaboration.Four factors were found to shape the implementation of informal formative assessment practices: teachers’ attitudes and beliefs,student characteristics,working conditions,and dominant summative assessment culture.Overall,this study contributes to the understanding of IFA practices in Chinese junior high EFL classrooms.The findings may have implications for teacher education aimed at improving the quality of informal formative assessment practices in EFL classrooms.