A Study On Formative Assessment In College English Teaching And Learning

Evaluation is a key component in College English teaching and learning. A comprehensive, objective, scientific and accurate evaluation system is of vital importance to the achievement of the course goal. College English Curriculum Requirements ("the Requirement"hereafter) (2004, For Trial Implementation) proposes the establishment of combining formative assessment and summative assessment to assess students'ability to use English in an all-round way. Formative assessment has been the mainstream concept of the present evaluation since the Requirement was revised and officially established in 2007. But the colleges and universities in China still use test scores and grades as primary assessment criteria, even over the past few years since the concept was introduced into China, most of the researches on the theory and practice of formative assessment are mainly carried out in the basic and secondary education. The researches and experiments on formative assessment at colleges and universities have been done at the trial level.This thesis is a study on innovation of assessment in college English teaching and learning. It consists of five chapters. Chapter One starts with an introduction which deals with the background and significance of the study, a brief history of language testing and a overview of the development in foreign language teaching assessment domestic and abroad.Chapter Two is literature review, in which three theories supporting formative assessment were discussed: humanism, constructivism and multiple intelligences.Chapter Three focuses on Theory of formative assessment including clarification of terminology, characteristics of formative assessment, functions of formative assessment and tools and techniques of formative assessment. And the components of portfolios were clarified including the definition of portfolios, function of portfolios, types of portfolios, evaluation of portfolios, distinction between portfolio and portfolio assessment, characteristics of an effective portfolio and portfolio assessment.Chapter Four is the main body of the thesis, which presents an empirical study of carrying out formative assessment through student portfolios in College English teaching and learning. The experiment was conducted to find out whether formative assessment could have the positive influence on the language teaching and learning in terms of improving the students'academic achievement, developing the students autonomy, stimulating the students'motivation in language learning and indicating the fairness of assessment on students'progress in learning. Two classes were chosen to involve in the experiment, one is the experimental class, in which the formative assessment was integrated into the teaching and learning and the other is the control class, in which the traditional assessment was used only. Student portfolios, observations, questionnaires, interviews and different studying tables and checklists were served as tools. The study lasted two terms. The collected data were analyzed by means of some methods in statistics.Chapter Five comes to the conclusion that the formative assessment could strengthen the students'motivation, improve students'academic achievement, be helpful to develop the students'autonomy and enhance the fairness of the assessment on the students'progress in learning. Some suggestions for further researches were available based on the findings.