The Application Of Formative Assessment To English Writing Teaching In Senior High School

Teaching evaluation,as an essential part of the English curriculum standards,has the function of motivating and promoting learning.According to General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2020),evaluation should mainly adopt formative assessment with summative assessment as a supplement with the aim of assessing the English subject core competencies.The evaluation system should pay much attention to the adoption of multiple subjects of evaluation,the diversity of evaluation forms,the comprehensiveness of evaluation content,and the multi-dimension of evaluation objectives.However,due to the examination pressure and the imperfection of the evaluation system,at present,the evaluation of English writing teaching in senior high school is mostly dominated by teachers,and there are still problems such as single evaluation method and evaluation subject.The author reviewed previous studies and applied formative assessment to English writing teaching in senior high school based on humanism,constructivism,and process writing approach.Two questions are attempted be to answer.1)Can the implementation of formative assessment to English writing teaching in senior high school affect students’ English writing ability? 2)Which aspect of students’ English writing ability can be affected by the implementation of formative assessment?To answer the above two questions,108 students from two parallel classes of Class 2and Class 3 of Senior 2 in a senior high school in Chongqing were selected as the participants in Experiment Class(EC)and Control Class(CC)respectively for a three-month teaching experiment.This study adopted a quasi-experimental approach,combing tests,questionnaires,and the interview.The whole research was divided into three stages: preexperiment,the implementation of the experiment,and post-experiment.The pre-test showed that there was no significant difference in English writing ability between the two classes and the pre-questionnaire investigated the students’ writing attitude and their evaluation of writing ability in the EC before the experiment.In the experimental implementation stage,EC adopted formative assessment in English writing teaching,while CC used the traditional teacher-centered assessment method.In the post-experiment stage,students in two classes participated in the post-test,and the post-questionnaire was distributed among students in EC.SPSS 26.0 was adopted to analyze the results of tests and questionnaires by using independent samples T-test and paired samples T-test.Additionally,nine students from higher-level,middle-level,and lower-level groups were selected for interview to investigate students’ attitude towards the application of formative assessment.And students’ interview recording was subsequently transferred into words for further analysis.The results showed that the application of formative assessment was conducive to improving senior high school students’ English writing ability.Specifically speaking,their writing ability has been improved in terms of content,structure,grammar,and vocabulary,especially for students at middle-level and lower-level.Overall,this study proves the feasibility and effectiveness of applying formative assessment to English writing teaching in senior high school.Based on the above research results,the author puts forward some specific suggestions for English writing teaching practice.However,this study also has some limitations,such as the short experimental time,the limited experimental sample size,and the insufficient guidance on the use of the writing assessment sheet,which weakens the effects of peer-assessment.Future research can expand the sample size,extend the experimental time,and expand the research subject.