Study On The Influence Of Formative Assessment On Senior High School Students’ Writing Self-Efficacy

General Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(2020)(2017 edition,2020 revised)points out that one of the language ability goals is using written language to express meaning and conduct interpersonal communication effectively in specific regular contexts.It also suggests that evaluation should mainly adopt formative evaluation,with summative evaluation being supplementary and it should allow students to build up confidence.However,in reality,writing evaluation is still based on summative evaluation,which is difficult to improve high school students’ writing self-efficacy.The single evaluation subject and method lead to students not being aware of the improvements in their own writing and being unable to write,resulting in a low sense of self-efficacy in writing.Therefore,in order to solve this problem,the author applied formative assessment to writing teaching of high school students based on social cognitive theory,multiple intelligence theory,constructivist theory,and process writing,in an attempt to improve students’ writing self-efficacy.This study was conducted in two sophomore classes of a public high school in Chongqing,with a total of 115 students,in order to investigate the following questions: 1.What are the effects of implementing formative assessment on senior high school students’ writing self-efficacy? 2.What aspects of writing self-efficacy are affected more by formative assessment? 3.How does formative assessment influence students’ writing self-efficacy differently at different levels? In order to solve the questions above,this study used a quasi-experimental design for the experimental and control classes using some methods like tests,questionnaires,and interviews.The experiment lasted for three months and was divided into three phases:pre-experiment,the implementation of the experiment,and post-experiment.In the pre-experimental phase,the author collected the students’ writing scores on the first English test at school and distribute writing self-efficacy questionnaires to the two classes.The pre-test and pre-questionnaire showed that there was no significant difference between the two classes.So the author assigned them as experimental class and control class randomly.Besides,the author divided the students in the experimental class into three groups: high level,medium level,and low level according to their writing scores.In the implementation phase,students in the experimental class were taught writing using formative assessment,while students in the control class were evaluated in a traditional way.In the post-experimental phase,the author once again administered the writing self-efficacy questionnaire to both classes and implemented semi-structured interviews for students at different levels.Through the analysis of the questionnaire results by SPSS 26.0 and the summary of the interviews,the author concluded the following: 1.formative assessment can improve students’ writing self-efficacy;2.formative assessment improves writing skill self-efficacy more significantly and;3.formative assessment has a greater impact on the writing self-efficacy of medium and lower level students.In conclusion,this study demonstrates the feasibility and effectiveness of formative assessment in improving high school students’ writing self-efficacy.The author also made some suggestions for teaching practice in response to the above findings.However,due to factors such as the short experimental period and small experimental sample size,the effects of this study may have some bias.Future research can extend the experimental period and expand the experimental sample size.