An Application Of Formative Assessment In English Writing Teaching In High Schools

Summative assessment is always adopted while dealing with high school students’ performance in China. None appears to provide information about individual students’ process. Increasingly, it has become obvious that the outcomes of traditional normative tests are indicating, not all they need to learn about students’progress (Luo2001). According to the new English Curriculum Standard of high school the curriculum aims are defined as comprehensive language proficiency, which includes learning attitude, skills, strategies and etc. As a result, the traditional quantity-based assessment gets gradually powerless in testing students’ language competence. However, formative assessment is a type of qualitative assessment, which offer both students and teachers useful information for their future development, and encourage students to become active learners (Luo2001). As a matter of fact, whether in theory or in practice, researches on formative assessment are not enough to meet the increasing needs of current situation.The study was carried out to find out whether formative assessment could more facilitate the improvement of high school students’ writing ability than summative assessment. The study provided a tool of formative assessment, which assessed the students’ writing progress through developing students’ writing portfolios. The hypotheses were put forward:Formative assessment can more facilitate the improvement of high school students’ writing ability than summative assessment.100students in two classes from No.102High School of Tianjin were chosen to participate in the study as subjects. Both classes were required to take a pretest at the start of the experiment to decide on their writing proficiency. The results of the pretest showed the two classes were nearly at the same level in writing. And posttest was given at the end of the experiment to the change as exactly as possible. Two questionnaires were designed and given to the students before and after the experiment, mainly to examine the changes in the participants regarding their attitudes towards writing. The two classes were compared based on the scores of the tests and questionnaires. The results revealed that the experimental class under the formative assessment achieved higher rate in writing ability than the control class under summative assessment. The reflective awareness and attitude towards writing in experimental class are also great. So conclusion can be reached that formative assessment can more facilitate high school students’ writing ability than summative assessment, it is more helpful to bring up students’ writing interests and develop their ability of self-reflection, and it can help the students become independent learners.