An Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Formative Assessment On Learner Autonomy In Junior High School Teaching

Learner autonomy emphasizes the idea of ‘student center’ which it is totally differentfrom the traditional idea and model of education. Meanwhile, it is an important way ofreforming the traditional teaching model. The new curriculum standards point that the aim ofEnglish teaching is to cultivate students’ learner autonomy, then to form the effective learningstrategy. Therefore, there is a great significance to improve students’ learner autonomy.Assessment as a tool of English teaching makes a great influence on English teaching.For a long time, influenced by the traditional and the examination-oriented education,summative assessment has become the main evaluation way of English teaching. Thisapproach emphasizes on evaluate teaching result, ignores teaching process. While, nowadays,quality-oriented education has been promoted gradually, summative assessment cannot meetthe education needs any more. Formative assessment emphasizes teaching process, whichuses all kinds of ways to evaluate the process of teaching and learning. Meanwhile, it notonly displays the process of learning, but also pays attention to students’ learning interests,learning strategies, students’ emotion and so on. In recent years, scholars have been donemore and more researches on its concepts and basic theory, but there is little research on theinfluence of students’ learner autonomy.This thesis starts by defining the definition of formative assessment and learnerautonomy and reviewing related literature. Then, the researcher conducted questionnaires andexperiment to explore the following three questions: first, the current situation of students’learner autonomy. Secondly, the current implementing situation of formative assessment injunior high school. Lastly, the effect of formative assessment on learner autonomy.The author firstly did questionnaires as the preparation work in Shijiazhuang ForeignLanguage School. The researcher used questionnaires to investigate the implementationsituation of formative assessment and the situation of students’ learner autonomy, whichinvolved in120students and60teachers, and then she collected and analyzed the data viaSPSS13.0. The questionnaires’ results suggest that students’ learner autonomy is notoptimistic, and the implementing situation of formative assessment in junior high schoolshould be improved. For the experiment, the author used tools and measures of formative assessment (classroom observation, portfolios, journals et al) to explore the effect onstudents’ learner autonomy in the experimental class which implemented from the beginningof September to the end of December of2013. Sixty students participated in the experiment.According to implementing the experiment, students’ learner autonomy (mainly aboutlearners’ learning interest, management, and the time of learning English out-of class) andachievements have been improved. And then, the research got the conclusion that formativeassessment is helpful to improve learner autonomy, teachers should use different tools andmeasures of formative assessment to stimulus students’ learning interests, motivation andwillingness et al, to improve their learning strategies, to enhance their ability of selfmanagement so as to make their learner autonomy improved.At last, based on the investigation results, some implications and suggestion onoptimizing the evaluation system are improved, in the hope that improve teaching and learnerautonomy.