A Study On English Teachers' Formative Use Of Summative Tests In Test Follow-Up Activities In Senior Middle School

The competitive exam system in China has a long history since Han Dynasty.Competitive exam,as a way of implementing summative assessment,has a significant impact on education in China.Summative assessment can determine the stage and level of students' learning while formative assessment aims to judge,modify and enhance students' learning.When summative and formative assessment are playing a part together in education,the former one is likely to weaken and shadow the latter.One way to facilitate the implementation of formative assessment is to build a synergy between formative and summative assessment.The formative use of tests designed primarily for summative purposes,also known as formative use of summative tests(FUST)is a strategy of implementing formative assessment and establishing a synergy between formative and summative assessment.However,there are few empirical studies on the formative use of summative tests both in China and other countries.Xiao Yangyu studied how teachers formatively used summative tests in test follow-up to make test practice become more productive.Three activities were defined as the formative use of summative tests: teachers explaining test papers to address difficulties,teacher-student conferences for individualized feedback and student follow-up actions to enhance learning.Following the study of Xiao,this qualitative research aimed to further investigate how teachers adopt formative use of summative tests in test follow-up to improve students' learning.The research was set in a senior middle school in Foshan city,Guangdong Province.Four English teachers and twelve students participated in this study.Through classroom observation and interviews with teachers and students,the study explored what activities teachers took to formatively use summative tests in test follow-up,their purposes to adopt these activities,and students' perspectives of how these formative activities enhanced their learning after tests.Specifically,this study addressed two main research questions: First,What activities do teachers adopt to formatively use summative tests in test follow-up? Second,How can teachers' formative use of summative tests in test follow-up activities influence students' learning?As a result,the study has reached the following conclusions: First,in this study,there were seven activities that show teachers' formative use of summative tests in test follow-up,they included analyzing test data to inform follow-up,explaining test papers to address difficulties,guiding students to assess and explain test papers,sharing analysis of test items and test-taking skills,developing students' good learning habits,teacher-student conferences for individualized feedback,and teachers assignments and students follow-up actions to enhance learning.Second,teachers' activities of formative use of summative tests in test follow-up could potentially improve students' learning when these activities,as identified in the present study,were able to provide students with feedback on test performance,address their difficulties and stimulate their thinking and reflection,involve them in self assessment or peer assessment and stimulate their motivation,or offer them individualized feedback and emotional support.Imposed tasks like the follow-up assignments may also have potential influence as they further strengthened what students had learned in lessons and tackled their weaknesses.Despite the limitation that the extent to which follow-up activities are influencing students' learning can't be determined from the collected data,this research proves that there is an synergy between formative and summative assessment when the former closely links to the latter to show its learning potential and summative tests can be used to deliver formative information.Moreover,it enriches the empirical studies of formative use of summative tests.