Effect Of Formative Assessment On Students'English Autonomous Learning Ability In Secondary Vocational School

The National English Curriculum Standard advocates establishing reasonable assessment system and developing students' autonomous learning ability.Formative assessment and autonomous learning ability are of great concerns to educators in recent years.Formative assessment and autonomous learning ability have been studied both qualitatively and quantitatively.However,most of the researches aim at theoretically discussing on how to foster autonomous learning ability.As for participants,most of the researches discuss the effect of formative assessment on students' autonomous learning ability in middle school,but few studies focus on vocational school students.Therefore,this study focuses on secondary vocational school students and explores the effect of formative assessment on secondary vocational school students' English autonomous learning ability from an empirical point of view.Based on this,two questions are put forward: 1)what's the effect of formative assessment on secondary vocational school students' English autonomous learning ability? That is,what's the effect of formative assessment on various aspects of autonomous learning ability,such as learning planning,using extra resources,learning confidence,learning attitude,leaning habits,learning strategies,self-monitoring and self-evaluation? 2)If formative assessment does improve secondary vocational school students' English autonomous learning ability,can their English learning achievements also be improved?To study the two questions,the researcher takes 110 freshmen as the subjects,who major in machinery operation,in Chengdu Railway Engineering School.They are from two parallel classes.One class is the experimental class and the other is the control class.Each class has 55 students.The author applies formative assessment tools,including classroom observation,learning journal and portfolio,in the experimental class while in the control class the author uses the traditional summative assessment.The experiment lasted for a semester from the beginning of March to the beginning of July in 2016.In the experiment,questionnaire surveys and tests were implemented to collect the data.Using the SPSS19.0 statistical software,the researcher conducted the independent samples t-test to analyze the collected data of the questionnaires and the tests and compared the results of the two classes.The findings are as follows.Firstly,formative assessment can improve students' English autonomous learning ability.Secondly,formative assessment can improve many aspects of autonomous learning ability,such as learning planning,using extra resources,learning confidence,learning attitude,self-monitoring and self-evaluation.However,students' learning habits and learning strategies are not obviously improved.Thirdly,formative assessment has a positive effect on students' English autonomous learning ability,and students' English learning achievements are also promoted.There are some implications based on the findings.In English teaching,teachers can change the traditional evaluation methods and use formative assessment to stimulate students' learning interest,enhance students' learning confidence and cultivate their autonomous learning ability.In addition,students should make learning plans,set learning goals,self-monitor and self-evaluate their learning process to promote their autonomous learning ability.