The Application Of Formative Assessment To British And A Merican Literature Teaching For English Majors

British and American Literature,which is a compulsory course for English majors of universities in the mainland of China,aims at improving students' literary competence,namely literary reading,appreciating and understanding competence.Due to its vast and difficult contents and also summative assessment and so on,the outcome of literature teaching in universities is far from satisfactory.Since 2012,Hunan Normal University has tried to apply formative assessment to British and American Literature teaching in order to reform the traditional assessment method.Formative assessment attaches highly importance to students'learning process and provides immediate learning feedback to both teachers and students alike in order to promote teachers' teaching and students' learning.Since the proposal of formative assessment,lots of researchers have carried out numerous researches on it both at home and abroad.However,they mainly focus their researches on theoretic aspects,not the instructional aspects.There is for lack of the application of formative assessment to college instructions,especially for English majors.Therefore,it will be of great significance and necessity to apply formative assessment to the British and American Literature teaching classes.In this study,the author applies formative assessment to British and American Literature teaching.This study is based on the theories of Constructivist Learning Theory and Multiple Intelligences Theory.The author intends to explore the following three major questions:Firstly,are there any significant differences before and after the application of formative assessment to literature teaching in terms of the three factors related to students' literary competence?Secondly,what effect can the application of formative assessment bring to literature teaching on students' literary competence?Finally,what's the reflection of students to formative assessment?The empirical study lasted for half a year with 33 juniors majoring in English translation in Foreign Studies College of Hunan Normal University from February to August.This study was divided into three different periods.Before the study,the author introduced the theoretic bases of formative assessment and also the standard of it to the subjects.During the study,the author acted as a non-participatory observer and took part in the British and American Literature classes every Wednesday morning from February to August in the year of 2016.Research instruments like portfolios,questionnaires,classroom observation,interviews and test were used to collect the research data.After the study,multiple sources of data were gathered for further analyses.The combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods ensured a reliable result.At the same time,the statistic software SPSS 21.0 was employed in this study while analyzing the gathered data in a scientific way.In other words,Paired-sample T-test and Multiple Liner Regression analysis were employed in this study to analyze the gathered data.Here are the findings:1)There are significant differences before and after the study in terms of the three factors related to students' literary competence.Furthermore,Multiple Liner Regression analysis reveals that the three factors are highly related to students' literary competence.2)Formative assessment can effectively enhance students' literary competence.3)It is likely that English majors can accept formative assessment as a tool for efficient learning.It shows that students hold positive opinions on the application of formative assessment to literature teaching.They think that formative assessment has provided them with an opportunity to acquire more knowledge and urged them to set learning goals themselves in order to know more about their own weaknesses and strengths.To sum up,it proves that the application of formative assessment to British and American Literature teaching is an effective way to enhance students' literary competence.What's more,formative assessment does exert a favorable influence on students.This empirical study can enrich currant studies on the study of formative assessment and also can provide certain references for further studies in the reform of assessment method.