A Survey of the Application of Formative Assessment in English Teaching at Middle School

1、关于形成性评价在初中英语教学中应用的调查报告a survey of the application of formative assessment in english teaching at middle school摘 要 这篇文章旨在研究形成性评价策略在初中英语教学当中的应用和实施情况。文章首先总结了一些关于形成性评价研究的论依据，然后于新安中学进行了一项有关形成性评价应用的调查研究。这项研究的研究方法包括教师采访，课堂观察和问卷调查。为了收集到更加有效的数据，教师采访，课堂观察以及问卷调查这三种方法所获得的数据将结合在一起分析。最后，基于一些有关形成性评价的理论依据，结合研究获得的数据

2、进行分析整理，从而了解形成性评价在初中英语教学中的应用所带来的种种教学效果和形成性评价策略实施过程中存在的一些潜在的问题。关键词：形成性评价；策略；教学效果；中学abstractthis paper is mainly focus on the application of formative assessment in the middle school. the paper first summarizes some theories of formative assessment and then implements a survey in xinan middle school. t

3、he research methods of this research are teacher interview, classroom observation, and questionnaire. in order to collect more reliable data, the data of these three methods have been combined to analyze. finally, this paper have based on the theories and principles of formative assessment, analysis

4、 the data of survey, revealing some advantages and some problems during the process of the application of formative assessment during the process of secondary english teaching. key words: formative assessment; strategies; advantages; middle school table of contents page1. introduction.11.1 definitio

5、n and characteristics of formative assessment.11.2 relationships between formative assessment and elt .22. literature review.42.1 theoretical background.42.2 review of literature.52.2.1 some researches at university.52.2.2 some studies in middle school.6 2.3 research focus.63. methodology.83.1 resea

6、rch methods83.2 subjects.93.3 instruments .103.4 data collection procedures114. discussion.134.1 the data analysis.134.1.1 the prior situations of students english learning.13 4.1.2 the students views and responses on formative assessment15 4.1.3 some advantages of the application of formative asses

7、sment.194.2 suggestions.215. conclusion.235.1 implications235.2 limitations.24references.25appendices.27acknowledgements.291 introductionthis chapter will give the definition and talk about some characteristics of formative assessment first, and then the relationships between formative assessment an

8、d elt will show on this chapter.1.1 definition and characteristics of formative assessmentwith the newly composed education system and aims of education in china, a new system of curriculum evaluation which called formative assessment has been established in secondary education system in china (wang

9、 xuefeng, 2008). black & william (1998) defined that assessment was include all activities that can be used diagnostically to alter teaching and learning, and the diagnostic use of assessment to provided feedback to teachers and students over the course of instruction is called formative assessment.

10、formative assessment is a beneficial way for students to improve the ability of them to study the english well, and there are five main characteristics of formative assessment. first, formative assessment takes the student as the main body and encourages them to take part in the process of assessmen

11、t. second, formative assessment should penetrate the process of teaching and learning because assessment is a basic part in the process of teaching and learning. third, the ways of formative assessment are multivariable. fourth, the aim of formative assessment is to promote the development of studen

12、ts. fifth, all the strategies of formative assessment are openly to the students and parents (杨炳武，2008).it is important for teachers to create many opportunities to assess how students are 21 introductionlearning and then use this information to make the beneficial changes in instruction of english

13、teaching. obviously, formative assessment is an important educational activity because it can produces the feedbacks among teacher and students during the process of learning and teaching.1.2 relationships between formative assessment and eltformative assessment is a modern way of assessment; it is

14、generally carried out throughout a course or project and it has the close relationships with elt (english language teaching). reed & daniel in 2009 has concluded that formative assessment is also referred to as educative assessment, and it is used to aid the learning. formative assessment is also ca

15、lled the process assessment, and it is mainly emphasizes the process of elt and aim to improve the quality of english teaching and learning (杨炳武，2008). the traditional assessment way which called the summative assessment is often given the information periodically to determine at a particular point

16、in time what students know and do not know, and it is generally carried out at the end of a course or project (garrison & ehringhaus, 2008). in an educational setting, summative assessment is typically used to assign students a course grade (daniel, 2009).the true distinction between the formative a

17、nd summative assessment is that the goal of summative assessment is to provide a report card for parents and a final score for college administration officials (starkman, 2001). the consequences of this only can determine the students being promoted or not, getting into college or not. but the goal

18、of formative assessment is to provide feedback for someone inside classroom, and provide an indication of how well a student learning in a given subject at a given level (sadler, 1989). the consequences of this will more immediate. broadly and easily speaking, the summative assessment will answer th

19、e question “how did i do?” but formative assessment was answered the question “how am i doing?” (boston, 2002). apparently, formative assessment is a more positive and effective way of assessment in the process of elt.the new system of curriculum evaluation of formative assessment has been undertake

20、n seven years in the middle school in china since its establishment in 2001 (wang xuefeng, 2008). therefore, it is worth to conduct an investigation to investigate the advantages of the application of formative assessment in the process of english teaching in middle school.32 literature reviewthere

21、are two sections on this chapter. section one will review some theories of the strategies of formative assessment. section two will review some literatures and then discuss the research focus. 2.1 theoretical background boston (2002) has concluded that the assessment encompasses teacher observation,

22、 classroom discussion, and analysis of student work which including the homework and tests, and the assessment will become formative when the information is used to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs. garrison and ehringhaus (2008) have summarized that following instructional strategi

23、es are can be used formatively: (1) criteria and goal setting. (2) questioning strategies. (3) observations. (4) self andpeer assessment. (5) student recordkeeping.criteria and goal setting is a strategy to establish and defines the quality works of students together to assess the learning process o

24、f students. the quality works of students are homework, classroom tests, competition papers or other styles of students work. questioning strategy is a strategy to ask some questions or play some teaching games after a teaching task was over, and teacher can have the immediate information about stud

25、ents learning by this way. observations assist the teacher to gather the evidences of student learning as the feedbacks for students about their learning or as reliable data shared with them during the communication process. self and peer assessment is the way of students to complete the self-evalua

26、tion and then toevaluate each other in classroom. the process of students record-keeping can helps them to understand their own learning better because in the process of keeping on recording their works can helps them to see where they started to learn and the progress they have made. all of these s

27、trategies are necessary to the formative assessment process, and they are the theories to guide the english teaching.2.2 review of literature 2.2.1 some researches at universitylinjie zhao, yin rui, & lili li (赵玲洁，芮颖，李莉莉，2008) made a study of formative assessment, and found out that formative assess

28、ment not only have changed the traditional views of teachers, but also stimulated the students learning motivations and interesting. however, they discovered that formative assessment was not so easy to carry out in english teaching. zhaohong deng, shichao he, & haiping zhou (邓兆红，何世潮，周海平，2008) condu

29、cted a survey, and the consequence is that the portfolio of formative assessment can promote the learner antonym and self-examination. bingwu yang (杨炳武，2008) made a experiment in his class, and proved that formative assessment can helped students to cooperated with each other very well during the pr

30、ocess of english learning. he suggested that teacher should control the application of formative assessment well because the achievements students have got were not the only one standard to assess the students.these researches which have done at university have proved that formative assessment can b

31、ring some real benefits in the process of english teaching and learning. however, some problems also exist in the process of adopting the strategies of formative assessment. different teachers have the different views about formative assessment that will decide what way they will use, and what the r

32、esult it is. differentstudents have the different levels and knowledge of english. they also have different ability and potential capabilities of learning. teachers should consider that, and use the strategies of formative assessment properly to help every student. 2.2.2 some studies in middle schoo

33、ljinha gao (杲金华，2008) made a study about the peer and self-assessment using in the process of english teaching. the result of this study is that peer and self-assessment can promote students more actively and confidently in the process of learning. ames (1992) and vispoel & austin (1995) made a text

34、 analysis, and found that formative assessment can help the children who can achieve to higher level but have the poor performances at the beginning. wang xuefeng (2008) did a research to examine the views of teachers of the applications of formative assessment in middle school. the result of this r

35、esearch is that nearly all the teachers have affirmed formative assessment is a beneficial way to promote the development of english teaching and learning. nevertheless, some teachers think that there was some potential problems exit during the process of formative assessment.from these studies in m

36、iddle school, formative assessment has been applicant in secondary english teaching. the strategies of formative assessment can promote the communication and interaction among teacher and students, but there also exited some potential problems in the process of the application of formative assessmen

37、t in middle school. for example, many teachers were under big pressure to finish the teaching tasks, and they did not think that they have enough time to do teaching research and conduct formative assessment in their teaching (wang xuefeng, 2008).2.3 research focus many scholars and teachers have co

38、nducted the teaching researches of formative assessment, and proved formative assessment is a more positive and beneficial way ofassessment in the process of english teaching and learning. however, in the process of collected the literatures, the studies of formative assessment in middle school are

39、less than the universities. apparently, there is a research space of the application of formative assessment at middle school. this research will conduct a survey of the application of formative assessment in xinan middle school to find out the advantages of formative assessment, and whether most of

40、 students will affirm the beneficial effects of formative assessment.3 methodologythis chapter will discuss the research method, subjects, instruments, and the data collection procedure of this research.3.1 research methods quantitative and qualitative approaches are the two important research metho

41、ds in foreign language teaching. the purpose of quantitative research is used to explain, predict, and control the phenomena. in contrast, the purpose of qualitative research is used to describing and understanding the phenomena from the participants point of views (leedy & ormrod, 2001).on the theo

42、ry, quantitative and qualitative approaches are distinguished clearly. however, these two approaches are often combined to use in a research (刘润清，1999). both approaches involve the similar processes, for example, formation of one or more hypotheses, review of the related literature, collection and a

43、nalysis of data (leedy & ormrod, 2001). according to these theories, teacher interview and classroom observation are the data collection methods of quantitative approach, and questionnaire is the data collection method of qualitative approach. runqing liu (刘润清, 1999) have concluded that qualitative

44、researchers frequently use the triangulation method to comparing the multiple data on sources in an search of common themes to support the validity of their findings.in order to obtain more reliable data, this research will combine the teacher interview, classroom observation, and questionnaire toge

45、ther. that is to say, this research has combined the quantitative and qualitative researches together.3.2 subjectsthe subjects of this research were students and three english teachers in xinan middle school who were come from grade seven, grade eight, and grade nine during the spring 2009 semester,

46、 and the 30 students from each grade have been selected as the subjects of questionnaire, the quantity of them were 90. teacher one of grade seven was the t1. t1 was youngest among three teachers, but she has the most modern views about english teaching. t1 have known and even supported the strategi

47、es about formative assessment during her college life. because teacher one have known about the theories of formative assessment before her english teaching, teacher one adopted the strategies more specific and clearly during her english teaching. teacher two of grade eight was the t2. t2 has been a

48、n english teacher five years, and he has learned the theories of formative assessment two years ago. he has adopted some strategies of formative assessment in his english teaching about one year, and she has affirmed formative assessment was a beneficial way in english teaching.teacher three of grad

49、e nine was the t3. t3 has been an english teacher nearly 12 years. she was an old teacher in this middle school. therefore, she has learned the theories of formative assessment only half of a year. teacher three only adopted the strategies of formative assessment from this semester. because of this,

50、 teacher three was not so skilled to adopt the strategies of formative assessment. the 90 students were come from the grade seven, grade eight, and grade nine. they have different levels of english. the students of grade seven have the poorest level of english. t1 should use the most easy way to let

51、 the students known and supported the strategies of formative assessment.the students of grade eight have the higher level of english because the parts of them have learned english more than four years. it was easy for t2 to interact with them.the students of grade nine have the highest level of eng

52、lish because they have learned english for a long time. the problem of grade nine was the t3 was not so skilled to adopt the strategies of formative assessment during english teaching and learning.3.3 instrumentsthere were three data collection instruments used in the research: teacher interview, cl

53、assroom observation, and questionnaire. an interview can yield a great deal of information which is often quiet open-ended and use the face-to-face interviews (leedy & ormrod, 2001). the interview of this research use the way of face-to-face interview. there were three questions in teacher interview

54、. the first question was whether teacher has known about or has adopted the strategies of formative assessment in the process of their english teaching. the second question was how the teacher adopted the strategies of formative assessment. the aim of last question was the results of the application

55、 of formative assessment in english teaching and learning. in addition to the interviews with teachers, classroom observation was conducted in classroom. observations can capture the wide variety of ways in which people act and interact, and usually with field notes or videotapes (leedy & ormrod, 20

56、01). the observations of this research were use the way of notes for the purpose of identifying the processes of formative assessment strategies using. finally, a questionnaire was conducted among 90 students. from questionnaire, people can respond to questions with assurance that the responses will

57、 be anonymousand they may be more truthful than in a personal interview (leedy & ormrod, 2001). the questionnaire of this research contains 16 questions. and this questionnaire could divide into three parts: from question one to question five; the researcher could obtain the prior situations of students e